New Delhi: Repoters Without Borders (RSF) on Wednesday calls on the authorities in Uttar Pradesh state to appoint an independent team to investigate the shocking murder of Shubham Mani Tripathi, a newspaper reporter who recently said he feared being killed, and to bring the instigators to justice.
In a statement issued, RSF said that, “A local correspondent for the Kampu Mail, a Hindi-language daily, Shubham Mani Tripathi died on the spot when he was shot six times, three of them in the head, on 19 June in Unnao, a suburb of Lucknow, the state capital. In a recent Facebook post, he said he feared he could be killed because of his investigations into land expropriations of questionable legality linked to illegal sand mining.”
Kampu Mail local bureau chief Ritesh Shukla mentioned the name of Divya Awasthi, a local businesswoman involved in land transactions, as did the reporter’s uncle, Dhirendra Mani Tripathi. The NewsClick website quoted him as saying: “There is some government land that Divya Awasthi wanted to take possession of. [Shubham] exposed the matter and [said] she could not do that (…) Her goons had attacked Shubham at his house last year after he exposed her and now have killed him.”
“We call on the Uttar Pradesh authorities to appoint an independent investigation to shed all possible light on Shubham Tripathi’s horrific murder,” said Daniel Bastard, the head of RSF’s Asia-Pacific desk.
“In this region of northern India, the links between sand mafia bosses and local police chiefs mean that, when journalists are murdered in connection with their reporting, the police investigation is almost always closed without further action. The vicious cycle of impunity needs to be broken by means of legislation guaranteeing journalists’ safety.”
Discussion about this post