Guwahati: Condoling the unusual death of young television scribe Raman Kashyap at Lakhimpur Kheri locality of Uttar Pradesh in central India, the Geneva-based global media rights body Press Emblem Campaign (PEC) demanded an authentic probe into the incident that led to demise of the rural reporter on 3 October last.
According to local sources, Raman (35) was hit by miscreants amidst a chaotic situation where a large group of agitating farmers (against farm laws) were in confrontations with some workers belonged to Bhartiya Janata Party. Raman accompanie many local reporters to cover an event, but he had to lose his life. As the agitators set a moving vehicle on fire, eight other people died during the violent incident.
Raman’s family members claimed that he was shot at by the unknown assailants. Hailing from Nighasan village, Raman used to work for a news channel and left behind his wife, two minor children and other relatives. Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath, while expressing grief over the unfortunate incident, announced a compensatory financial package to close relatives of all the deceased.
“Raman Kashyap is the 59th journalists killed so far across the globe in 2021. A day back, Afghan scribe Sayyed Marof Saadat was shot dead by miscreants at Nangarhar locality of Afghanistan,” said Blaise Lempen, general secretary of PEC (https://pressemblem.ch/), adding that 92 media persons around the world lost their lives to assailants last year.
Bharat earlier lost journalist Ashu Yadav (hauled from Kanpur in UP), Sulabh Srivastava (Lucknow, UP) and Chenna Keshav (Nandyal, Andhra Pradesh) and Manish Kr Singh (Champaran, Bihar) to assailants since 1 January 2021. Acclaimed Indian photo journalist Danish Siddiqui was killed by the Taliban in Kandahar of Afghanistan. The PEC expects that the populous country may improve in the journo-murder index this year compared to 2020 which ended with 15 media casualties.
