2015: India’s Degrading Journalist Murder Index

By Nava Thakuria

01 January, 2016
Countercurrents.org

As the year passes off, India stands today at an awkward position
losing as more as five journalists to assailants in 2015, which is
higher than the tolls in previous year. While the robust media in the
largest democracy of the globe had lost only two scribes (MVN Shankar
from Andhra Pradesh and Tarun Kumar Acharya from Odisha) to goons in
2014, the statistics have gone up this time. In addition to the
murders of five journalists, the year 2015 also reported several
cases of assault and even suspected deaths of media persons across the
country.

Uttar Pradesh witnessed the first killing of a journalist this year on
June 8 as Jagendra Singh died after suffering from severe burn
injuries at Lucknow civil hospital. The Shahjahanpur-based freelance
journalist was allegedly doused with patrol and set ablaze by a group
of police personnel on June 1. His family members claimed that the
police had targeted Singh at the behest of UP minister Ram Murti Singh
Verma as the journalist used to expose his illegal activities through
the alternative media.

Singh was understood to receive threats from Verma for his regular
postings on facebook relating to the Samajwadi Party leader’s
corruption & land grab issues, which was incidentally supported by the
RTI inputs. Once worked for leading dailies like Amar Ujala,
Hindustan, Swatantra Bharat etc, Singh lately turned into an alternate
media journalist for a wider viewership.

However, the UP police floated a different story that Singh himself
immolated in front of the police personnel as they arrived at his
residence for a raid. Severely burnt Singh was taken to Lucknow, where
he died after a week. But in his dying declaration from the hospital
bed, Singh accused influential minister Verma for his tragedy.
Soon condemnations started pouring from local journalists to national
and international scribe bodies with human rights activists over the
UP government at Lucknow. The members of the bereaved family including
the victim’s father Sumer Singh, wife Suman, daughter Rachna, sons
Rahul & Rajan along with many local scribes also demanded a probe by
Central Bureau of Investigation into Singh’s murder.

Facing the heat of stern criticism from various international bodies
like the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Without
Borders (RSF), International Federation of Journalists (IFJ), Amnesty
International etc, the UP government ordered the suspension of five
police personnel suspecting their role in Singh’s murder. The chief
minister also offered a compensation of Rs 30 lakh to the Singh’s
family.

The second case of scribe’s murder was reported from Madhya Pradesh,
where the mining mafia abducted Sandeep Kothari on the night of June
19 and his charred body was recovered two days later. Kothari hailed
from Katangi locality of Balaghat district and the kidnapers brought
him from his home town to Sindhi locality of eastern Maharashtra to
‘burn him alive’ there. The MP police quickly arrested two suspects
(Vishal Tandi and Brajesh Daharwal), who run illegal mining and
chit-fund activities, in connection with Kothari’s murder.
The police however did not forget to declare that Kothari was a
‘criminal’ and he was killed because of personal grudges. On the other
hand, his father Prakashchand Kothari, mother Kanchan Devi and brother
Naveen demanded a high level probe into Sandeep’s murder and stringent
punishment for the culprits.

Thane-based journalist Raghavendra Dube lost his life to miscreants’
attacks on July 17. The Maharashtrian scribe went to cover a police
raid in a night bar, but soon his body with multiple injuries was
recovered from a nearby locality. It is suspected that the editor of
Khushboo Ujala, was beaten and stabbed to death by the criminals.
Then a television reporter named Hemant Yadav lost his life to goons.
Yadav, who worked for Hindi news channel TV24, was shot dead by two
motorcycle-borne miscreants on the night of October 3 at Dheena
locality of UP. He was taken to a nearby hospital where he succumbed
to his injuries.

The fifth and last journalist victim of 2015 was from Bihar. Mithilesh
Pandey was shot dead on October 25 in his village in Gaya district.
According to the family members, two masked persons entered the
victim’s residence in the evening and shot at him. Pandey was taken to
a nearby hospital, but he succumbed to injuries. According to his
family, Pandey used to receive threats from unknown individuals
because of his reporting for various Hindi media outlets.

India’s immediate neighbour Bangladesh also lost four bloggers namely
Niloy Chkrabarty, Ananta Bijoy Das, Washiqur Rahman Babu and Avijit
Roy last year, while Pakistan has two media casualties (Muhammad Zaman
Mehsud and Aftab Alam) in 2015. Sri Lanka reported the killing of
Priyantha Ratnayake though other tiny Indian neighbours have
maintained satisfactory records of no media casualties last year.
According to the Paris based Reporters Without/Sans Borders (RSF)
altogether 67 journalists were killed across the globe last year while
reporting or because of their works. There were 43 other deaths of
journalists, where the motive was not been clearly established that
they were targeted because of their professional activities.
Twenty-seven citizen-journalists and seven media workers were also
killed in 2015.

Iraq reported the highest number of media casualties (11), followed by
France (8), Syria (7), South Sudan (6) and Yemen (5). Some other
dangerous countries for journalists in 2015 emerged as exico (3),
Philippines (3), Brazil (3), Somalia (2), Ukraine (2), Azerbaijan (1),
Colombia (1), Guatemala (1), Kenya (1), Mozambique (1), Democratic
Republic of the Congo (1), Turkey (1) etc.

In 2013, India lost 11 journalists to the perpetrators including three
media employees (Sujit Bhattacharya, Ranjit Chowdhury and Balaram
Ghosh of Tripura) from northeast India. The previous year (2012)
witnessed the murder of five journalists including one from Assam
(Raihanul Nayum) and another from Manipur (Nanao Singh).
Now demands have been raised in India for a special protection law for
‘journalists on duty’ and a national action plan for safety & security
of media persons. Recently the media fraternity of Assam demonstrated
their resentments against the assaults on scribes across the country.
Wearing black bands around their mouths, the scribes from both print
and electronic media staged the protest demonstration in front of
Guwahati Press Club.

“We reiterate our demand for a national action plan to safeguard the
brave journalists who pursue critical journalism. Moreover we continue
insisting on justice to be delivered to all slain media persons across
the country,” said the Journalists’ Forum Assam. In a recent
statement, the forum also urged the media persons across India to rise
on the occasion to compel the authority to punish every single
murderer of journalists under the rule of law.

Nava Thakuria is a senior journalist from Assam