Justice for Scribes

Justice for Scribes

It took a very brave journalist to print in his newspaper an anonymous letter against self-styled godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim at the height of his power in October 2002. And for his commitment to the journalistic cause, Ram Chander Chhatrapati paid with his life soon after. Gunned down outside his residence in Sirsa of Haryana, the 53-year old editor’s murder has reached its denouement after more than 16 years with the conviction of Ram Rahim and three others. They were convicted under Section 302 (murder) and 120 B (criminal conspiracy) of the IPC by the CBI court, and on Thursday, they were handed life terms. Dera Sacha Sauda chief Ram Rahim, already serving a 20-year jail term handed in August 2017 for rape of two female disciples, had been named as the main conspirator in Chhatrapati’s killing in CBI’s chargesheet in 2007. The chain of events had begun with the publishing of a letter in Chhatrapati’s evening daily Pura Sach which starkly detailed the horrific and systematic sexual exploitation of female followers in Ram Rahim’s Dera headquarters at Sirsa. The crippling atmosphere of fear in the Dera, the brainwashing of followers, the thuggery of the Baba’s henchmen, the impunity with which ‘inconvenient’ people were eliminated — all these and much more were written by a female disciple (two in fact, as the CBI found out later). Addressed to then Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee, the Chief Ministers of Punjab and Haryana, the National Human Rights Commission, the CBI and the Punjab and Haryana High Court, it was only the high court that took suo moto cognisance of the letter and sought a report from the Sirsa district and sessions judge, even as Chhatrapati’s family moved the high court over his killing. Ram Rahim nearly got away with court stay orders before the CBI zeroed in on the identities of his anonymous accusers and got them finally to testify in court; even as the cases meandered on for a decade, political leaders vied to pay obeisance at the Baba’s Dera. Such is often the clout of big-time wrongdoers that journalists have to run up against in the course of duty. Insult is sometimes added to injury, as it was in the case of Chhatrapati whose brazen killing was mostly ignored by mainstream media.

Lest we forget, the six journalists killed last year in India were all pitted against deadly adversaries. Rising Kashmir editor Shujaat Bukhari and two guards were shot dead by terrorists at the J&K Press Enclave in Srinagar; Dainik Bhaskar scribe Naveen Nischal and freelancer Vijay Singh were mowed down by an SUV at Bhojpur in Bihar, allegedly by a village council chief and his goons; Sandeep Sharma, who had done a series of stories on the sand mining mafia in Bhind district of Madhya Pradesh, was crushed to death by a dumper with the murder caught on CCTV camera; Aaj reporter Chandan Tiwari, abducted and beaten to death in a forest in Chatra district of Jharkhand, had blown the lid off scams in the PM housing scheme; Doordarshan photo-journalist Achyuta Nanda Sahu was killed in a Naxalite ambush at Dhantewada district in Chattisgarh. Since 1992, 47 journalists have been killed in India, according to data compiled by the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) which campaigns for the right of journalists to report without fear of reprisal. Reporters Without Borders (RSF), which works for freedom of the press, ranked India at 138 among 180 countries on the Press Freedom Index for 2018, two places down from the year before. In the list of countries dangerous for scribes because their work is a threat to the high and mighty, India came in fifth (jointly with the US). Of the 80 scribes killed worldwide last year, nearly half were in countries like India not fighting a war. But as the dastardly killing of Saudi journalist Jamal Khashoggi at the US Consulate in Istanbul shows, the world community has begun to hold countries like Saudi Arabia to account for such killings. This changed mood was reflected in the cover of Time recently, which showed prominent journalists murdered or incarcerated for their work (including Khashoggi) as Person(s) of the Year. It needs be appreciated that the freedom of speech and expression that Indian citizens enjoy under the Constitution also includes the right to know and the right to receive information. Without these rights, citizens will find it very hard, if not impossible, to make up their minds on vital public issues. This is where journalists come in — but the service they render, apart from being mostly thankless, becomes downright risky when criminal elements enjoying official patronage strike with impunity. It is good that the law has caught up with the killers of Ram Chander Chhatrapati at trial court after 16 years. But justice has eluded the families of Parag Das, Kamala Saikia and other intrepid journalists in Assam slain in the line of duty. If this is due to official apathy, if not complicity (including messing up of the crime scene and destruction of evidence), then it is high time for the new awareness to catch on here. After all, with the advent of alternative media, any citizen can be a journalist.

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