New Delhi: Days after the body of Uttarakhand journalist Rajeev Pratap Singh was recovered from the Joshiyara Barrage in Uttarkashi, his pregnant wife Muskan has strongly disputed the police’s version of an accidental death.
The questions she is asking point to unaddressed loose ends about the independent journalist’s final moments, in a case shrouded in mystery.
In 2011, Singh had started his independent YouTube channel, Delhi Uttarakhand Live, exposing local corruption and raising public interest issues. Married just nine months ago, Muskan said her husband had been receiving death threats after posting videos critical of local authorities. Anonymous callers were pressuring him to delete the videos, threatening to kill him if he refused, she told ThePrint.
The FIR, a copy of which ThePrint has accessed, was registered on an initial missing person complaint filed by the family, before being amended to include abduction charges under the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita. The Uttarakhand Police earlier this week formed a Special Investigation Team (SIT) to probe the journalist’s death.
On the night of 18 September, Rajeev Pratap Singh was last seen driving a vehicle own by Soban Singh, his friend who is also a policeman. The car, an Alto, was Soban’s private vehicle, according to the FIR.
Muskan was in touch with her husband over calls from her in-laws’ place in Dehradun. In their final video call at 11.15 pm, she urged him to go home and rest. “If I had not cut the call, maybe I would have known what happened to my husband,” she rued, now seven months pregnant.
The next time she tried to contact him, her calls stopped going through, and the journalist’s family approached the police the following day. On the same day, the police recovered the car Singh was driving, in a mangled state from the Bhagirathi River near Gangotri. The State Disaster Response Force (SDRF) and the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) then started search operations. On 28 September, they finally spotted a body at the barrage in Joshiyara. The police, the next day, confirmed it was Singh.
The family is standing firm on its suspicions of foul play, insisting the death was “neither accidental nor suicidal”.
Speaking to ThePrint, Uttarkashi Superintendent of Police Sarita Dobhal, however, said, “The postmortem revealed chest and abdominal injuries, [sustained] as the car plunged 50–60 metres into the river—the cause of death.” Investigators had not found any foul play, so far, but were still probing, she added.
What happened on the night of 18 September
According to the Uttarkashi police, the journalist was last seen on CCTV footage at 11.39 pm on 18 September, driving alone. His last call was logged a minute later, at 11.40 pm, before his phone switched off.
Singh was driving on the right side of the road along the river, the footage shows, said SP Dobhal.
Hours before that, the SP further said, Singh was with his policeman-friend Soban Singh and a cameraperson named Mandeep Kallura, who had joined the journalist just a few days earlier.
“All three of them were together for 3–4 hours, though the cameraperson left early. When they were heading out, Rajiv sat in the driver’s seat. Even though Soban told him to get down, he insisted, saying, ‘No, I will just turn the car and bring it’. Then he drove ahead. Soban followed, but soon lost sight of him,” SP Dobhal told ThePrint.
She added that the three had been drinking as well, and that the statements of the journalist’s wife as well as Soban’s had been recorded by the police.
Asked what Soban did when he realised Singh had not returned, Dobhal said, “He assumed that he had gone to a relative’s house. They had known each other for a long time, so he didn’t find it unusual, and went back home.”
She added that Soban Singh initially refused to give his journalist-friend the keys to the car but later relented.
The doctors confirmed in the postmortem that the body had no major external injuries, only internal ones, but as it had been in the fast-flowing Ganga for nearly ten days, the skin had peeled off, said SP Dobhal. Remains lost in water bodies take up to 10-11 days to recover, she added.
The police, Dobhal said, have questioned everyone who met Singh from morning to evening on the day he disappeared, including Soban. “We have questioned everyone, and whatever they have told us was verified as well.”
Charges of ‘threats & negligence’
“He was getting threatening calls,” Muskan, who lives in Dehradun with her in-laws, recalled.
While this was not the first time someone had tried to intimidate her husband, she alleged that he appeared particularly disturbed and frustrated this time.
Muskan also alleged negligence on the part of the police and Soban Singh, even as the SP said they had taken the latter’s statement and verified the same, and no indications of foul play had been found so far.
Muskan said she had been in touch with her husband till her calls stopped reaching him. Later that night, she tried contacting Soban but only managed to get his number the next morning. She alleged that he misled her on their first call saying her husband must be home with her. “He knew fully well that I live in Dehradun with my in-laws. Why would he say that?”
When pressed, Soban, Muskan further claimed, admitted that the journalist had taken his car the previous evening but offered no explanation as to why he did not get in touch when he failed to return.
“Neither did he fulfil the duty of a friend nor that of his uniform. If a police officer wanted, he could have called the nearby police station to check. But he did not even file a missing report for his car or my husband,” Muskan said.
Only after the family reached Uttarkashi was a missing person complaint registered. Muskan claimed she repeatedly asked Soban to go and search for her husband, but he allegedly refused to “go alone”.
“We get so worried when somebody takes our small things, and he did not even care about his car, worth Rs 8-9 lakh.”
Muskan said that when she told the police about her doubts, the officers told her they had checked Soban’s call records and location. They told her Soban went looking for her husband at 11 pm and returned by 1 am.
“It is not even that big of an area that it would take so long. If he did go, why lie? And not tell me? I only found out from his police statement,” she said.
She further argued that the condition of her husband’s body did not match the explanation that he drowned and remained underwater for 11 days. “If that had been the case, we would not have been able to recognise him. But when I saw him, his body was clean. I could recognise him clearly.”
According to her, the doctors who conducted the postmortem told her that there was no water in his lungs.
On 26 September, Muskan met the district magistrate of Uttarkashi, who assured her that the SDRF-NDRF teams would intensify their search for her husband, with his body found two days later.
‘Paid price for being a journalist’
Launching his channel on 2 March 2011, Rajeev Pratap Singh steadily built a modest but loyal audience of more than 4,000 YouTube subscribers, nearly 2.5 lakh video views, and 20,000 Facebook followers.
He worked alone, often with just his phone and mic, sometimes asking friends or neighbours to hold the camera. His brother, Alok Singh, remembered him as “fearless”.
“My brother was never afraid of anything. If he saw something wrong, he just picked up his mic and started reporting,” he said.
Over time, Rajeev Pratap Singh began focusing closely on issues within the state—the Uttarakhand Subordinate Service Selection Commission (UKSSSC) paper ‘leak’, local elections, roads, schools, and temple committee finances, besides interviewing political leaders.
His final video, uploaded on 16 September, highlighted the state of the Uttarkashi district hospital—showing garbage and beer bottles scattered across the premises, with no doctors in sight.
His family has stressed that the hospital report, along with his questions about Gangotri Temple Committee’s funds, and his coverage of the local panchayat polls, roads, and schools, could have put him in danger.
According to Muskan, he often came under pressure to take down his reports, but for Rajeev Pratap Singh, journalism was less about a profession and more about responsibility.
“Being a journalist, raising issues of human rights, he kept fighting till the end,” Muskan said. “If such things happen to journalists, where will common people go?”
She recalled how he often described himself as a voice. “He always said, I am not just for my family, I am for everyone. I am the voice of those people whom no one listens to. He paid the price of being a journalist.”
“After all, my husband fought for everyone…I join my hands, asking this administration to give justice to my husband,” she added.
(Edited by Madhurita Goswami)