Press freedom in India: Journalists under attack
There is a disturbing trend in India. Post last month’s re-election of Narendra Modi as Prime Minister and the return of his right wing Hindu national Party, BJP, to power, the attacks on journalists critical of the administration have increased with a terrifying intensity. A vernacular language journalist was arrested at the beginning ofJune on the flimsy charge of defamation because he shared negative comments of the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh, Yogi Adityanath on Facebook. Two days later, two more journalists were arrested on similar charges.
In another state, Karnataka, in the south of India, four journalists were arrested on charges of attempted murder while reporting on environmental hazards in a pharmaceutical concern.
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Here is a report on Aljazeera.The trend of attacks on media personnel follows the gruesome and well publicised murder of Gauri Lankesh, a prominent Bangalore based journalist, a case yet to be solved by the city’s police.
Since, 2014, when the BJP government came to power, fifteen journalists have been killed in India. This augurs badly for a democracy, especially when it is the world’s largest and even more so when it boasts of being the largest news producing country in the world. Statistically this might be true but the press is definitely not free in India.