The International Press Institute (IPI) today condemned the arrest in India of a political cartoonist for sedition following a private complaint over cartoons he produced for an anti-corruption campaign.

IPI sources said that Indian political cartoonist Aseem Trivedi was remanded to judicial custody in Mumbai today, and is scheduled be held until at least Sep. 24 on charges of sedition; using electronic equipment and the Internet for sending offensive messages; and insulting India’s Constitution, national emblem and parliament.

The sources added that the arrest followed a private complaint by a railway employee to police in Mumbai in the western state of Maharashtra over a number of cartoons depicting Trivedi’s criticism of political corruption in India.

Trivedi has produced several cartoons to be used in an anti-corruption campaign and has published them on his website, The Dirty Picture of India. One cartoon depicts the gang rape of “Mother India” by a politician, a bureaucrat and the devil representing corruption. Another turned the three lions atop the national symbol, the Ashoka pillar, into wolves with blood dripping from their jaws, changing the motto “Truth alone triumphs” to “Corruption alone triumphs”. A third cartoon depicted Ajmal Kasab – who was convicted for his role in the Mumbai attacks of Nov. 26, 2008 – as a dog urinating on the Indian Constitution, while another cartoon depicted the Indian parliament as a toilet bowl.

The cartoonist appeared before Mumbai police on Saturday evening and was arrested. Police brought him before a Mumbai court yesterday afternoon, and the court remanded him into custody until Sep. 16. However, faced with public protests and an admonition from the Maharashtra state home minister that police had no legal grounds to arrest Trivedi, authorities brought him back to court again today, where he was remanded into custody until Sept. 24.

Trivedi, in protest, reportedly refused to apply for bail or to have legal representation.

“IPI is gravely concerned that a cartoonist has been imprisoned on charges of sedition,” IPI Deputy Director Anthony Mills said. “In any healthy democracy, all media must enjoy the right to criticise and lampoon public officials and corruption, and we consider the continued detention of Mr. Trivedi to be a breach of press freedom and a blow to India’s democratic principles.”

Trivedi’s arrest was also met by strong condemnation from civil society activists, lawyers and the chairman of the Press Council of India, Justice Markandeya Katju, a former judge of India’s Supreme Court.

The chairperson of IPI’s Indian National Committee, N. Ravi, director of The Hindu and a member of IPI’s Executive Board, said: “The police action against the cartoonist based on a private complaint was outrageous. It was ironic that when the cartoonist was seeking to depict how the criminal and the corrupt were desecrating the national symbols, he himself should be charged with desecrating them. The basic thrust of the cartoons was to mock at the pretensions of politicians and the bureaucrats, and while one may disagree with the message or with the mode of depiction, there is certainly no cause for regarding them as criminal acts.”

He added: “The Supreme Court of India has approved the position that such acts must be judged from the standpoint ‘of reasonable, strong-minded, firm and courageous men, and not those of weak and vacillating minds, nor of those who scent danger in every hostile point of view’. As for the content, the standard of tolerance in a democratic society approved by the Court is that it should extend also to ideas that ‘offend, shock or disturb the State or any sector of the population’. It is shocking that in cases like this involving basic freedoms, the police should act mechanically on a complaint and arrest the cartoonist, ignoring the law as laid down by the courts.”