In 24 years,23 Assam journalists killed or missing,no one convicted

As police probe the murder of former Indian Express journalist J Dey in Mumbai,journalists organisations in Assam have pointed out that investigations into 23 such murders.

As police probe the murder of former Indian Express journalist J Dey in Mumbai,journalists organisations in Assam have pointed out that investigations into 23 such murders or suspected murders in 24 years including that of the editor of a leading daily have made simply no headway.

Two of these journalists,Indra Mohan Hakasam of Amar Asom and Dwijen Das of Ajir Batori,were abducted and are presumed murdered. A third who hailed from Assam,Ankur Borbora,went missing from Kolkata.

Journalists in Assam in fact are working under tremendous pressure including the risk of life. But,while so many journalists have been murdered,not a single case has been solved till today, said Prakash Mahanta,secretary of the Journalists Action Committee (JAC),Assam.

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The first of these murders took place in 1987 when Punarmal Agarwal,a correspondent of The Assam Tribune,was killed at Kampur by suspected ULFA militants. The last murder was that of Bimala Prasad Talukdar,editor of a muffosil newspaper called Swatantra Awaz,who was gunned down at Hojai in 2010.

In several cases,suspected killers have been identified. But the investigating agencies have failed to pin them down and take the cases to their conclusion,Mahanta said. He mentioned specifically the murder of Parag Kumar Das,executive editor of Asomiya Pratidin,the highest-circulated Assamese daily,who was shot in broad daylight on May 16,1996,while coming out of a school after picking up his minor son.

Though the CBI carried out a long probe into the Parag Das murder,it ultimately failed to pin down the culprits,with the district and sessions court in Guwahati in July 2009 acquitting the main accused. We were suspicious of the CBIs inability since the very beginning,so we have moved the High Court with a review petition two months later, said Pallab Das,younger brother of the slain editor.

It is unfortunate that not a single case of murder of so many journalists has been solved till today. I think it is the failure of the investigating agencies, said Geetartha Pathak,president of the Journalists Union of Assam,affiliated to the Indian Journalists Union. Most of the murders are related to insurgency,except that of Prahlad Goala,which was the handiwork of the tree-felling mafia, Pathak said.

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Goala,district correspondent of Asomiya Khabar,had received threats from a forest mafia don days after he wrote a series of stories exposing a criminal-official nexus in 2006. Three years later,Anil Mazumdar,editor of Aji,another Assamese daily,was shot dead in the heart of Guwahati in a case unsolved till today.