Geneva: Press Emblem Campaign (PEC), the global media safety and
rights body, condoles the sad demise of two young journalists in India
and Afghanistan within 24 hours and urges the concerned authorities to
probe the developments that led to their untimely deaths, and
subsequently to book the perpetrators to justice.
It may be mentioned that a 22 years old journalist cum Right to
Information (RTI) activist named Buddhinath Jha (also known as Avinash
Jha) was found dead in Madhubani district of Bihar in eastern India.
Buddhinath used to report on many fake medical clinics operating in
his locality and some of those were also closed by the authority.
Suddenly he went missing four days back and later his charred body was
found by a roadside on 12 November. The Benipatti-based family claimed
that Buddhinath was offered a lot of money (as bribes) by some illegal
healthcare clinic owners, but he did not respond to them. Later he
received a number of threatening calls from unknown persons.
“It is frustrating that a young scribe has to lose his life for
exposing the fake clinics, which are otherwise killing innocent people
with incompetent medical interventions. It seems, those criminals are
more organized to offer bribes as well as threats. The Bihar State
government must ensure an authentic probe into his death and punish
the culprits,” said Blaise Lempen, secretary-general of PEC
(https://pressemblem.ch/).
Meanwhile, an Afghan television news presenter named Hamid Saighani
was killed in an explosion that rocked Kabul city on 13 November. The
young scribe used to work for Khurahid and Aryana News. Hamid’s wife,
also a journalist, Fawzia Wahdat confirmed the heart-breaking news. He
is the 12th journalist (including Indian photojournalist Danish
Siddiqui) to be killed in the war-torn Afghanistan since the beginning
of 2021.
Prior to Buddhinath, India lost five journalists namely Ashu Yadav,
Sulabh Srivastava, Ch. Keshav, Manish Kumar Singh and Raman Kashyap to
assailants this year, said PEC’s south Asia representative Nava
Thakuria, adding that India’s two neighbours Pakistan and Bangladesh
reported seven and two casualties of media workers respectively, where
Bhutan, Nepal, Maldives, Sri Lanka, Myanmar have not reported any
incident of journo-murder.
