A recent report released by an international media rights group – Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) is a damning indictment of India’s policy toward protection of journalists in the country. The largest democracy in the world also features in the list of world’s top 14 countries declared unsafe for journalists.
The report studied every case to have occurred in India since 1992 and narrowed down to 27 cases of those journalists who were slain out of retaliation for their work.
Committee to Protect Journalists’ report also states that there are at least two dozen more cases under scrutiny to ascertain if any political motivation was behind the journalists’ assassination.
While everything in the Indian TV newsrooms appears hunky-dory, the story is not the same for the rural journalists who are more vulnerable and could end up paying with their lives as the report delineates.
Close to 90% of the journalists to have been killed in India since 1992 worked for a print publication and more than half of them indulged in unearthing scams and corruption.
Security of Journalists in the states of Uttar Pradesh and Bihar seems to be at the lowest.
Jagendra Singh, a journalist from Shahjahanpur, Uttar Pradesh was allegedly set ablaze by some local policemen and goons who raided his house on June 1, 2015. Jagendra’s friends and family called him exceedingly courageous, but at times reckless for being too critical of those in power. His last statement came from a hospital bed where he lay with severe burns on his body to which he succumbed a week later on June 8, 2015.
A crying Jagendra, in his last video, appears to be saying “Why did they burn me? If the ministers and his goondas had any complaint against me, they could have beaten me instead of pouring kerosene and burning me.”
Rajdeo Rajan, bureau chief of Hindi newspaper, Hindustan – a sister concern of English daily, Hindustan Times, was killed in cold blood by a group of five criminals en route to his home on a bike.
A detailed scrutiny of aforementioned cases reveals startling facts. Poor law and order situation has since long paved the way for criminals to walk scot-free and none of the criminals in the above mentioned 27 cases were brought to justice except for one where the accused was convicted, but later released on appeal.
The CPJ’s report has surely rung alarm bells now, but Press Council of India in 2015 had shed light on the matter thereby also acknowledging that the culprits are getting away with impunity and the need for a nationwide law protecting journalists. However, the council’s demand seems to have fallen on deaf ears and nothing significant has been done by the Narendra Modi government to rid India of this menace.
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