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LATEST NEWS UPDATES | Breaking The News, Brutally -Ushinor Majumdar & Sharat Pradhan

Breaking The News, Brutally -Ushinor Majumdar & Sharat Pradhan

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published Published on Aug 2, 2015   modified Modified on Aug 2, 2015
-Outlook

Freelance journalists, especially in small towns, are paying dearly for speaking up

Ground Down

* Uttar Pradesh: Jagendra Singh burnt in his own house ‘by policemen’ after he reported against the state’s PWD minister

* Madhya Pradesh: Sandeep Kothari abducted after reporting on illegal mining. Burnt body found in Maharashtra

* Uttar Pradesh: Haider Khan beaten, tied to a bike and dragged in Pilibhit after reporting on land-grabbing

* J&K: Javed Malik assaulted by security guards of a PDP minister after he pro­­­­tes­ted against lewd remarks directed at his wife

* Punjab: Jasdeep Singh died in a freak accident (in 2013) after a truck rammed into car of local police chief

***

Sandeep Kothari, a journalist in his forties, was riding his motorcycle with a friend on the pillion in Katangi, in the Balaghat district of Madhya Pradesh, when a jeep rammed them from behind. The two men were beaten up; the assailants bundled Kothari into the jeep and left. The next day, June 22, his charred body was found near a railway track in neighbouring Maharashtra.

Kothari was a stringer (a freelancer who provides news inputs, usually from smaller towns and to more than one newspaper) for some Hindi newspapers. He had reported on illegal manganese mining in Balaghat and filed a complaint about it in court. He’d also exposed a chit-fund company. One of his last posts on Facebook, pledging to uphold India’s honour and sacrifices of martyrs till his last drop of blood, reads: “Azadi ki kabhi shaam nahi hone denge/ shahidon ki kurbani badnaam nahi hone denge/ Bachi ho jo ek boond bhi garam lahu ki/Tab tak Bharat mata ka aanchal nilaam nahi hone denge.” His sister says she had pleaded with him to give up journalism, dreading he’d be killed for his work.

But Madhya Pradesh police don’t see any link to his work. One official even alleged that Kothari was a ‘criminal’ and may have been killed by business rivals.

It’s an old story, repeating itself. The  stringer personifies the journalist-as-individual, alone and with little money or organisational backing, striving to speak truth to power, puny but assertive, if a trifle shrill. He has appeared in cameo in stories, plays and films, usually the underdog, beaten into silence or killed like Kothari. He also appears as the wily machinator or pliable cog in the shadow world of small-town politicking, contract-mongering, motivated activism, even blackmail. Either way, he treads dangerous ground, as the flurry of attacks on stringers and small-time journalists in the last few weeks have shown. Two—Kot­hari and Jagendra Singh, of Shahjahanpur, UP—lost their lives; two got off with beatings.

The Committee for Protection of Journalists (CPJ), New York, puts India at the 13th position on its annual Impunity Index, highlighting murders of journalists in which killers aren’t brought to book. The CPJ says 35 journalists have been killed in India since 1992—on the lower side, for 24 journalists have been killed worldwide in 2015; but there’s a possibility that many more murders of Indian journalists have remained below the radar.

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Outlook, 6 July, 2015, http://www.outlookindia.com/article/breaking-the-news-brutally/294697


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