The Delhi police shamed the nation by their shabby behaviour by manhandling and molesting journalists while reporting JNU protest. They grabbed their camera and attacked them. Such kind of brutality to journalists is condemnable from all corners.
Ours is one of the largest democracies in the world and democracy survives if its institutions are honoured. The free press is one of the most decorated institutions, in which journalists come in the picture, to give detailed, accurate and true news, to the country’s people, by widely covering up, good and bad events.
It is really a shameful thing that some State governments, instead of functioning in accordance with democratic norms, as promised to the voters during election time, deceiving them, by means of committing illegal acts, such as encouraging mafias, to fully do their illegal activities and killing upright journalists, for exposing their sins.
Recently, an honest scribe, Jitendra Singh was burnt to death by miscreants on the instructions of a Uttar Pradesh politician for exposing his total involvement in illegal mining. While another courageous journalist Haidan Khan, who was severely beaten and dragged behind a motorcycle for writing about illegal land grab, in the then lawless state UP.
Clearly saying, such kind of attacks on scribes not only to silence them, but also threatening them from not disclosing such details of murky deals that flourish in these two states of UP and MP. The then ruling SP in UP was totally responsible for such incidents.
Attacks on journalists are not new. 79 journalists were killed over the 25 years. In 2013, eleven scribes were murdered, says Press Council of India. In Syria and Pakistan too, plenty of journalists were killed. In India, scribes are mostly killed in small towns. Moreover, our journalists risk their lives, by reporting corruption and crime and broadly exposing links between the police, politicians and criminals.
Unfortunately, the journalists doing their news coverage in big cities do not support their colleagues working in small towns. Neither media watchdogs nor any civil society, take courage to speak, demanding stern action against those intimidating the media. Due to this, our democracy will be wholly eroded, as opined by Political Scientists and Statesmen.
Hence, the government should bring a powerful act at the earliest, making the media attackers not to escape from the clutches of the tough provisions of the act.
