Ambrasanit Rajan
Appearances
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
Mukesh Chandrakar was a freelance journalist in the state of Chhattisgarh in central India. Now, he has been writing about alleged corruption on road construction projects because these long road construction projects involves hundreds of thousands of dollars and people are expected to give money to various officials and politicians.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
This has been the case for decades, you know, there is alleged corruption in these projects. Now, he has been reporting on those corruption issues through various media outlets and also through his YouTube channel called Bastar Junction. Now, one of those projects, it got stopped and then there was an investigation into what was really happening.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
So, according to police, on the 1st of January, he went to meet two of the suspects at a compound and then he did not come back. So his family members, they filed a complaint with the police and then they went and searched for him. By tracing his mobile phone locations, they finally reached out to this compound of a private contractor.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
And the senior police officer said on the first day they could not find anything. And then when they found a newly concrete slab septic tank, it was broken open and they found the body of Chandrakar. And according to police, the body had several injury marks. Now they're treating this as an alleged murder and three people have been arrested.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
The police suspect that because of his work, he could have been killed by the other two people. But this has triggered shockwaves among the journalistic community in the state.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
These kind of incidents, they are not uncommon in India. For example, a couple of years ago, another journalist in the state of Bihar was killed. He was shot dead because he was writing about how people are illegally taking sand from the riverbed that is causing erosion. So what they call a sand mafia. So that's a very, very risky job.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
You have to, especially people in small towns and smaller cities where the journalists do not have that kind of protection where Big media houses do not have their own correspondents where somebody can back them up, whereas many of them district level correspondents, as we know, they work as freelancers for many of the national outlets or nowadays they have their own YouTube channel.
Global News Podcast
Millions hit by huge winter storm in US
So it is not the first time such things are happening.