An Indian TV news reporter has been abducted and killed while covering a protest rally in the remote north-eastern state of Tripura.
Shantanu Bhowmick, who was working for Dinraat or Day And Night news, was reporting on a road blockade by a political party representing indigenous tribal people when he was abducted late on Wednesday, said state police chief AK Shukla.
Bhowmick was later found with multiple stab injuries and died before he could be taken to a hospital.
Police arrested four members of the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura in connection with the killing.
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Journalist organisations held protest meetings in different cities in India on Thursday, condemning the attack on the 27-year-old journalist and calling it an assault on freedom of the press.
“North-east India has long been a zone of impunity where various militant groups have threatened, attacked, and often killed journalists trying to do their jobs,” the Foundation of Media Professionals said.
Political parties and security forces were known to intimidate journalists in the many conflict zones that dot the region, the media group said.
Bhowmick was the second journalist to be killed in India this month.
Gauri Lankesh, the editor of a weekly and a fierce critic of Hindu hard-liners, was shot and killed outside her home in Bangalore on 5 September. No arrests have been made.
Picture (Reuters): Demonstrators shout slogans as they block a railway track during a protest, organised by Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura (IPFT), demanding a separate state carved out of the northeastern state of Tripura, at Khamtingbari on the outskirts of Agartala, India July 10, 2017.
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