By our correspondent
Guwahati, June 25:
Joining the chorus of local and international organizations ,Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA) also expressed serious concern over the brutal murder of a young scribe at Unnao locality of Uttar Pradesh (UP) in northern India and urged the State government in Lucknow to punish the culprits who were behind the assassination of journalist Shubham Mani Tripathi.
Shubham (25), who was associated with the Kanpur-based Hindi daily newspaper Kampu Mail as a correspondent from Unnao, fell prey to bullets of two shooters on June 19, 2020 as he was returning home on a two-wheeler. Seriously injured Shubham was taken to a hospital in Kanpur, but he succumbed to serious injuries on his head.
A resident of Brahmnagar in Unnao district, Shubham was a born patriot and used to report on illegal sand mining practices in his locality.
Recently married to Rashi Dixit, Shubham even received threats from unknown individuals, suspected to be illegal miners, for his news coverage. But the courageous scribe did not bother and continued his journalistic activities.
International media rights bodies like Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ), Reporters Sans/Without Borders (RSF) etc have asked the UP police to transparently investigate the scribe’s killing and ensure that all responsible are brought to justice. Quoting his
brother Rishabh Mani Tripathi, the CPJ asserted that Shubham was targeted for his works as a reporter.
The police have already arrested Afshar Ahmed, Abdul Bari and Shahnawaz Azhar suspecting their involvement with the murder. They have also launched searches for one Divya Awasthi, who is accused in various land grabbing & sand mining cases and was mentioned in the first information report filed by his brother in the police station.
Shubham had reportedly several arguments with land grabbers as they asked him to avoid reporting their issues.
“So unfortunate that, a committed scribe like Shubham has been silenced. He is the first victim of journo-murder incidents in India this year. We demand justice for Shubham,” said a statement issued by JFA president Rupam Barua and Secretary Nava Thakuria with a fervent appeal to UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath to adequately compensate
the bereaved family.
India as a whole witnessed nine incidents of journo-killing during 2019, but only one incident could emerge as a case of targeted murder.
K Satyanarayana (45) of Telugu daily Andhra Jyothy faced the fate because of his activities as a journalist. He was hacked to death on October 15. Local scribes informed Satyanarayana was targeted in earlier occasions too.
Others who were killed last year include Jobanpreet Singh,Vijay Gupta, Radheyshyam Sharma, Ashish Dhiman, Chakresh Jain, Anand Narayan and Nityanand Pandey. Kerala scribe K Muhammed Basheer was mowed down by a vehicle. Guwahati scribe Naresh Mitra also died in a mysterious accident. Bihar’s scribe Pradeep Mandal was also attacked by miscreants, but he survived..
