Malé, Maldives – The High Court of Maldives has decided to live broadcast the appeal proceedings of a case submitted to the court concerning the number of Indian army personnel stationed in the Maldives.
The case was submitted to the High Court by ‘Dhiyares’ journalist Ahmed Azaan, who first took the case up with the Information Commissioner’s Office (ICO) when the Ministry of Defence refused to disclose the number of Indian army officers based in the country.
In 2020 when Azaan first submitted the case to ICO, the then Commissioner Hussain Fiyaz Moosa declared that the decision of the Ministry to withhold the information was justified.
The appeal case proceedings began in the High Court today, and Azaan requested the case to be live broadcasted, upon which the bench of Judges approved the request, with no objections from the Information Commissioner’s Office as well. With this decision, the proceedings for the day were cut short.
The live broadcast is likely to take place on Youtube as this has been the general practice for live broadcasted cases from the court so far.
The bench of Judges presiding over the case consists of Judge Abdullah Hameed, Judge Hassan Shafeeu and Judge Hussain Shaheed, who is also the Chair of the bench in this case.
This comes at a time where the India Out campaign lead by the opposition is heating up. However, the government insists that the presence of Indian army officers in the country is not for military purposes.
