Another Mukesh Chandrakar In The Making? How Journalists In Today’s India Are Curtailed From Their Journalistic Duties And Their Lives Are Put At Threat
In India’s democracy, a free press is enshrined in law, but in practice reporters often face intimidation, legal harassment, and even violence for exposing wrongdoing. The recent ordeal of Madhya Pradesh journalists Shashikant Jatav and Amarkant Singh Chouhan illustrates this perilous reality. The two reporters claim Bhind District police officials brutally assaulted and tortured them after they exposed a powerful sand-mining mafia.
As they fled to Delhi seeking safety, their case has reached India’s highest courts. The question haunting observers is whether they could become “another Mukesh Chandrakar”, a journalist murdered in Chhattisgarh in January 2025 after investigating corruption.
The Bhind Journalists: Allegations of Torture and Harassment
Shashikant Jatav and Amarkant Singh Chouhan are mid-level news reporters based in Bhind, Madhya Pradesh. They allege that on May 1, 2025, Bhind’s Superintendent of Police (SP) Asit Yadav lured them to his office under the pretext of discussing their reporting. Once there, Chouhan (bureau chief of Swaraj Express) was stripped and beaten by the SP and other officers in front of a group of journalists. They say both men were then detained in police custody. A few days later, on May 4, they claim police intercepted them en route to Delhi and forced them to the SP’s official residence, warning them to drop all complaints.
During that encounter they were beaten again and coerced not to pursue any case against the police. Jatav (bureau chief of Dainik Bejor Ratna) and Chouhan say police even hurled caste-based slurs at them as Jatav is from the Jatav Dalit community, and physically assaulted Jatav with a sandal. Fearing for their lives after these incidents, the two journalists fled to Delhi on May 19 and filed complaints with the National Human Rights Commission and Press Council of India.
Their allegations of custodial torture and harassment soon reached the courts. Chouhan petitioned the Delhi High Court first; on May 28, the HC granted him protection by Delhi police for two months to enable him to approach the MP High Court. However, police from Bhind allegedly hovered near the Delhi court, intimidating the press. Jatav’s own petition in Delhi HC was adjourned to July. The journalists then invoked the Supreme Court’s jurisdiction. On June 7, 2025, the Supreme Court bench of Justices P.K. Mishra and Manmohan granted Jatav and Chouhan limited interim relief: it barred their arrest for two weeks, instructing them to move the MP High Court for further relief.
The Court noted that “considering the nature of allegations” they should be protected until the MP High Court hears their case. However, the SC refused to rule substantively on the merits, effectively saying that the state courts should handle such complaints while implicitly acknowledging the reporters’ danger. As LiveLaw reports, counsel for the state government told the Supreme Court that “several complaints” were pending against the reporters, notably extortion charges, and argued they should not get blanket protection. The journalists’ lawyer countered that these accusations were false and reiterated that her clients “were actually fearing for lives”.
In their petition, Jatav and Chouhan accuse SP Yadav and other Bhind police of “kidnapping, custodial assault, caste-based abuse, and death threats,” forcing them to flee their homes. They allege the SP told them to stop reporting on the sand-mining mafia, which has tentacles in local politics and allegedly operates with police connivance. The petitioners have been given copies of fabricated FIRs against them, they say, and face a campaign of legal intimidation. As a senior news report summarized: “the petition accuses the Bhind SP and his subordinates of custodial assault, kidnapping, caste-based abuse, and continued harassment,” and notes that Jatav and Chouhan had to take refuge in Delhi due to threats.
This case has attracted national media attention not only for its brutality but because Bhind police so openly flouted legal norms of keeping journalists under surveillance at a Delhi court; for example, that it recalls some of India’s darker chapters. Whether the courts will deliver justice remains uncertain, but the episode is a stark example of the dangers journalists face simply for reporting on organized crime.
A Legacy of Violence: Journalists Attacked and Killed Across India
The plight of Jatav and Chouhan echoes a long and grim pattern of attacks on journalists in India. In recent years, dozens of reporters have been maimed or murdered, especially those covering corruption, crime or minority issues. The most high-profile recent case is that of Mukesh Chandrakar, a 33-year-old freelance journalist in Chhattisgarh. He went missing on January 1, 2025 after investigating shoddy road contracts, and his body was found two days later in a septic tank. Post-mortem reports showed he had “multiple severe injuries” to his head, chest, back and abdomen.
Police immediately suspected his killing was linked to his work: he had a popular YouTube channel and had just filmed a report on corruption by contractors. The Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ) noted that four suspects were arrested and officials suspended, but the murder sent shockwaves nationwide. UNESCO’s Director-General condemned Chandrakar’s killing and called for a “thorough and transparent investigation”, emphasizing that investigative journalists “take great risks” to inform the public.
Chandrakar’s case drew parallels to several other journalist murders, past and present. UNESCO also condemned the May 2024 killing of Ashutosh Srivastava in Uttar Pradesh, urging police to bring the culprits to justice. In late October 2024, 45-year-old Dilip Saini, a Fatehpur district correspondent for a news agency was stabbed to death. Police described it as a property dispute gone violent, but the killing added to the sense that even local reporters on mundane beats are not safe.
Similarly shocking were two related incidents in UP the same month. On October 27, reporters Amit Dwivedi and Shailendra Mishra of Hamirpur district alleged they were ambushed by the local Panchayat (village council) chairman, Pawan Anuragi, and his henchmen. The journalists say they were lured to a room, where Anuragi’s men switched off the lights and “stripped them at gunpoint, recorded humiliating videos and even forced them to drink urine”.
They were beaten, threatened with death, and told to pose with weapons for staged video footage. The next day Dwivedi and Mishra filed charges against the attackers. But in a shocking twist, police responded by filing counter-charges against the journalists under various sections including intimidation and even the Scheduled Castes & Tribes (SC/ST) Act. Only after public outcry were crimes registered against Anuragi and aides, but in the victims’ view this was done reluctantly and under political pressure.
Even when journalists survive attacks, the brazen impunity of their assailants is chilling. The Uttar Pradesh Correspondents’ Committee (UPACC) condemned the Hamirpur and Fatehpur incidents, with UPACC president Hemant Tiwari saying that these crimes “create an atmosphere of hostility toward journalists and undermine the government’s claims of zero tolerance toward crime”. Veteran editor Kumar Bhawesh Chandra warned that “many journalists, particularly in smaller towns and rural areas, face threats from influential political and criminal figures. These attacks are a direct challenge to freedom of expression.” Such voices highlight that UP, India’s most populous state, has become especially dangerous for reporters.
In other regions, the situation is no better. Karnataka saw the assassination of investigative editor Gauri Lankesh in 2017, and Maharashtra lost freelance reporter Shashikant Warishe in 2023 to an SUV ambush. In both cases the killers walked free. A broad CPJ study notes that “of the 27 journalist murders in India since 1992, not a single conviction has been upheld,” and that corruption and politics were the deadliest beats. Further, the CPJ’s Impunity Index has listed India for years among countries where crimes against the press go unsolved.
Physical violence isn’t limited to killings. For example, in April 2022 Odisha reporter Loknath Dalei was found chained to his bed in a district hospital after surviving police custody in Balasore. The Odisha Human Rights Commission immediately took suo moto notice of this “inhuman treatment”. Such episodes of custodial torture, chaining, beating or worse have also emerged elsewhere. The Bhind case itself involves alleged custodial torture.
Internationally-renowned cases include the 2010 beating of American journalist Jared Keller’s colleague Joel D’Souza, but even within India local reporters routinely speak of being roughed up by local police for their stories. A recent rights report points out how even peaceful speech now risks jail: journalists “have been arrested, held in pre-trial detention, and subjected to expensive criminal trials”, often without any violence.
In short, the Bhind incident is one of many in which journalists are physically threatened or harmed for exposing local crime, corruption or official abuses. Reporters Without Borders (RSF) and other watchdogs have repeatedly flagged India as a harsh environment for the press. In India’s restive Kashmir, for example, RSF says “any critical coverage is deemed ‘anti-Indian’”, giving security forces carte blanche to intimidate media.
One RSF expert told that under the current regime “authorities use [anti-national] accusations as a pretext to clamp down on independent coverage”. Overall, India’s press freedom rankings have nosedived: in 2009 India was ranked 105th out of 175 countries in RSF’s global index, but by 2024 it had fallen to 159th (below even Pakistan), a slide RSF calls evidence of an “authoritarian drift to muzzle independent media and silence critical voices”.
Press Freedom Rankings and Global Watchdogs
India’s deteriorating press climate is reflected in international indexes and watchdog reports. The Reporters Without Borders World Press Freedom Index for 2025 places India 151st out of 180 countries. This was a marginal improvement over 2024’s rank of 159, but still marks a steep fall from earlier years (India was 105th in 2009). RSF notes that India now even lags behind Pakistan and Bhutan; its latest report warns that media ownership concentration and economic pressures are undermining India’s once-vibrant press.
Freedom House, which downgraded India from “Free” to “Partly Free” in 2020, observed that attacks on the press have “escalated dramatically” under the current government. It explicitly cites the use of draconian laws (sedition, security and hate-speech laws, contempt statutes) to curtail “anti-national” speech as a cause of growing self-censorship. Similarly, Voice of America reports that Freedom House analysts see India’s media environment as growing hostile, with journalists under “increasing pressure and harassment.” They note authorities “have used an array of laws, including those related to security, defamation, sedition, and hate speech… which have tempered critical voices”.
The Committee to Protect Journalists has sounded the alarm too. In 2021 CPJ’s global census noted that India had the most media-worker deaths (four journalists killed) and at least six detained on anti-state charges worldwide that year. Its recent reports emphasize that impunity is the norm: “none of the cases of journalists murdered in India in direct relation to their work” has seen a conviction. Leading media experts remark that India now has “one of the most dangerous climates for the press” in the world.
RSF’s Asia-Pacific head Daniel Bastard warned that under India’s nationalist politics, any criticism is quickly labeled anti-state, giving security forces a pretext to harass journalists in places like Kashmir. Even the Prime Minister’s own statements about free speech ring hollow for many reporters, “There’s a climate of fear and self-censorship in the media, perhaps not even during the Emergency in the ’70s, and certainly no journalists were being killed with impunity then as they are being now”.
In sum, virtually every major press freedom index and watchdog report paints a bleak picture: India has plummeted in press freedom rankings, hosts myriad threats to journalists’ safety, and is widely criticized for its repressive climate. The map above, from UNESCO’s Global Observatory of Killed Journalists, shows in vivid terms that the problem is not isolated.
Legal Tools of Suppression: UAPA, Sedition, Defamation, and More
Beyond physical violence, Indian authorities increasingly use India’s penal laws to intimidate and silence the press. Laws originally enacted under British rule remain in force and are applied aggressively. A 2016 Human Rights Watch report found that India “routinely” employs the vaguely-worded statutes to harass critics, calling them “draconian” tools of censorship.
In recent years, the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA), meant for terrorism has also been used against journalists. For example, Kerala-based journalist Siddique Kappan was arrested in October 2020 under UAPA and sedition while covering a caste-based rape case, prompting him to remark “I am a journalist and I am a Muslim. I am the perfect target for UAPA”. Other Kashmir media figures, like Fahad Shah and Asif Sultan, likewise find themselves facing UAPA charges for reporting.
Sedition (IPC 124A) is another powerful stick. Although the Supreme Court has clarified that only incitement of violence falls under sedition, police and prosecutors routinely invoke it against dissidents and journalists anyway. A recent parliamentary committee even considered replacing sedition with a broader and more ambiguous statute against “separatist activities,” which rights groups warned would further endanger reporters. In practice, reporters who criticize politicians or question official narratives often find themselves labeled “anti-national” and arrested.
Criminal defamation is another common weapon. Unlike many democracies that abolished it, India still allows jail terms for defamation. News outlets and journalists are frequently sued by powerful figures. In the Bhind case itself, police have filed counter-FIRs against the assaulted journalists under sections including wrongful confinement, criminal intimidation, and even the Scheduled Castes and Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989, implying they themselves injured upper-caste police officers or trespassed; a tactic lawyers say was meant to intimidate them.
In short, an arsenal of legal provisions, UAPA, sedition, defamation, contempt, and even anti-terror funding or digital security laws are frequently wielded against critical journalists. Reporters Without Borders notes that these laws are often applied selectively to silence inconvenient reporting. One example: India’s newly proposed Press and Registration of Periodicals Bill (2023) would require newspapers to renew licenses every five years and allowed the government to cancel a registration if anyone on the staff had been convicted of vaguely-defined “terrorist” activities. Critics say this gives the state sweeping powers to shutter outlets. Amnesty International and PEN America have also demanded that India repeal such laws that criminalize journalism.
The bottom line is that many journalists today worry not only about thugs or guns, but about the police station and courtroom. As one media lawyer said of the trend, “these colonial-era laws… remain on the books but are frequently used in an attempt to clamp down on critics.”.
Voices of Concern: Journalists, Experts, and Rights Groups Speak Out
The cumulative effect of violence and laws has alarmed journalists and press freedom advocates. In numerous interviews and forums, media figures have warned of a crisis. In February 2025, veteran panelists at a Press Club of India literature festival described an “increasingly difficult terrain” for press freedom.
Others have noted the overt threat of violence. RSF’s Asia-Pacific head Daniel Bastard said at a conference that any reporting critical of the current government is quickly labeled “anti-state” or “anti-India,” giving authorities a justification to intimidate journalists, especially in sensitive regions like Kashmir. Hemant Tiwari of the UP journalists’ association stressed after the Hamirpur and Fatehpur incidents that “these attacks create an atmosphere of hostility toward journalists,” and that any “laxity in handling these cases could imply government complicity.” The Press Council of India and editors’ associations have also protested government raids on media, the arrest of journalists (e.g. arrest of student journalist Kanhaiya Kumar on sedition charges in 2016), and the use of UAPA.
In sum, the consensus among press freedom watchdogs, jurists and journalists is stark: India’s media environment has grown alarmingly hostile.
At The End: Our Democracy Is Under Test!
The saga of Jatav and Chouhan is a troubling lens on the wider assault on press freedom in India today. Their allegations of custodial torture mirror those of other reporters who have paid a high price for investigating power. “Perpetrators are seldom arrested” and journalists see little justice for attacks. And yet journalists continue to work in defiance of these risks, because they know public awareness depends on it. Without urgent remedy, the warning signs suggest another Mukesh Chandrakar could emerge. If the state cannot or will not protect its reporters, India’s constitutional promise of free expression risks becoming hollow.
In the final analysis, this is about more than two journalists in Madhya Pradesh. It is about whether a democracy can tolerate silence enforced by fear. Leading media voices stress that only a firm response will save press freedom: impunity for crimes against reporters must end, and draconian laws must be reined in. As UNESCO reminded us, when journalists “take great risks” to shine light on corruption, “their safety is crucial” to society. The cases of Chandrakar, Lankesh, Srivastava, and now Jatav and Chouhan demand accountability. India’s courts and institutions face a test: will they uphold justice and protect the press, or will reporters continue to risk becoming the next martyr for truth?
