Local protests in India this week follow the killing last Friday of India journalist Sai Reddy in the Bijapur district in south Chhattisgarh, The Hindu reported.
The 51-year-old journalist was attacked at a weekly market. Maoists are suspected in the killing, although none have taken responsibility, the newspaper said.
The death is the latest in a series of attacks on journalists in the troubled Chhattisgarh state:
Referring to the killings of three other journalists in the last three years, Shankar Pandey, president of the Sharmjibi Patrakar Kalyan, said the government “has hardly acted” to resolve Sushil Pathak and Umesh Rajput murder cases. The other, Nemichand Jain 43, was killed earlier this year by Maoists, who later issued an apology under pressure mounted on the outlawed party by journalists, blocking all news related to the rebels.
The Times of India’s Joseph John reported Reddy was “a rural journalist who earned the wrath [of] both the rebels and the police.” John quoted Bastar’s journalist association president S Karimuddin on Reddy:
“In 2008, Sai Reddy was arrested by the police and kept in jail under the state’s much-debated Chhattisgarh Special Security Act, accusing him of having links with the Maoists. On the other hand, Maoists had set his house ablaze and had threatened him suspecting him to be a sympathizer of the security forces”, [Karimuddin] said adding that the association strongly condemned the Maoist attack on journalists in Bastar.
The Indian Journalists Union has also condemned Reddy’s killing, The Hindu reported.
