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Indian journalists fearful after fourth attack in a month

Reporter beaten, burned to death in Madhya Pradesh
Indian journalists fearful after fourth attack in a month

An Indian TV channel covers an event in Hyderabad in April (Photo credit: reddees / Shutterstock.com)

Published: June 24, 2015 09:24 AM GMT
Updated: June 25, 2015 05:56 PM GMT

The journalism community in India is reeling after a reporter was found beaten and burned to death in Madhya Pradesh on Saturday, marking the fourth attack on journalists in less than a month.

Sandip Kothari was abducted while traveling with a friend Friday night by assailants who beat up the pair before taking Kothari away and killing him. The journalist, who worked with a local Hindi daily, was reported to have earned the ire of manganese and sand mafia in the area after writing investigations on them.

Kothari’s death comes amid a string of attacks on journalists.

Senior reporter Jagender Singh was attacked on June 1 at his home in Uttar Pradesh, allegedly by five policemen working at the behest of state minister Ram Murti Singh Verma. Singh died of his injuries a week after the attack, but implicated the minister by naming him in a “dying declaration”.

Singh had posted corruption allegations against the minister on his Facebook page.

The state has yet to take action against the policemen or the minister.

On June 11, local journalist Deepak Mishra was shot at in Kanpur district of Uttar Pradesh after reporting on local gambling dens.

On June 13, Haider Khan, a stringer with a local TV news channel, was brutally attacked after reporting cases of land grabbing by a local criminal.

Journalists and rights monitors said the killings were intended to target free press overall.

“It is an attack on the freedom of the press. The culprits know that they cannot attack the national journalists who are more influential so they are targeting and threatening local journalists,” Ashish Nandy, a former political editor, told ucanews.com.

He said that the attacks are a way of telling the journalist community to opt for safer stories and keep away from investigative journalism.

According to the Press Council of India, 79 journalists have been killed in the last 25 years for their work in the field of journalism.

The situation is particularly grim in Uttar Pradesh as the state saw the killing of four journalists in a span of 45 days in 2013.

India occupies tenth place in the 2015 list of deadliest countries in terms of press freedom, as compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Last year, the country made CPJ’s Impunity Index — a list of 12 nations where killers of journalists routinely go free.

Expressing concern at the recent attacks, Nandy said that killing of journalists is not a new thing in South Asia.

There have been attacks on fearless journalists in countries like Pakistan, Afghanistan and the Philippines but “it is sad that our country too is moving toward that direction”.

Echoing these views, Neerja Choudhary, a senior journalist, told ucanews.com that the recent developments are a very different kind of challenge for journalists in India, where there is an abridgement of the rights and freedom of the press.

The culprits are influential people who commit these crime with impunity knowing that they will get away with it, she said, pointing out that no concrete action has been taken to bring such culprits to justice as powerful people are involved.

“The government is so slow in reacting to the issue,” she said. Unless there is a public outcry, the government “is not going to listen,” she added.

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