Agartala, Udaipur: The day of 8 September wasn’t the first time that Ayub Sarkar, an editor of the Tripura-based Duranta TV, was threatened or his office ransacked.
Located at the Gomati area in Udaipur, Duranta TV has seen three such incidents since 2018, when the BJP first came to power in the state. The first attack occurred in March 2018, soon after the conclusion of the assembly elections in which the BJP had managed to overthrow the CPI(M) government.
A mob consisting of individuals — who, Sarkar said, had been affiliated to the Congress and shifted allegiance to the BJP — had come knocking on his door to collect money for the party. They then ransacked the building when Sarkar refused to comply.
Then, in February this year, a few other individuals, allegedly with loose affiliations to the ruling BJP, turned up at Sarkar’s office and threatened him over a news report that had implicated them in cases of corruption.
According to Sarkar, two years ago, the channel had run a news story accusing these individuals in various cases of corruption, including a job scam they had allegedly run.
It was this mob, according to Sarkar, that struck again on the night of 8 September.
Ashen walls, broken doors and windows, damaged equipment, and glass strewn over the floors — that was what remained of the building when ThePrint reached Duranta TV’s office in Udaipur a week later.
While Sarkar blamed the incident on “personal vendetta” over that news report, he claimed that such attacks on media houses had become a new phenomenon under the current dispensation.
“We faced attacks under the CPI(M), but they would never attack the channel directly. What is happening now is different,” he said.
Duranta TV wasn’t the only media organisation that was attacked that day. On 8 September, Pratibadi Kalam and its TV channel PB24 and the CPI(M)-affiliated Daily Desher Katha in Agartala were also attacked during a BJP rally.
BJP spokesperson Subrata Chakraborty, however, said his party doesn’t support such violence. “We don’t believe in this kind of violence, we don’t support this kind of violence; the Crime Branch will take action,” he said.
BJP Lok Sabha MP from Tripura, Pratima Bhowmik who is also the Union Minister of State of Social Justice and Empowerment, said the state government has, in fact, helped journalists.
“In the last three-and-a-half years, I don’t think there is any other state government that has treated journalists with the kind of respect that the Tripura government has,” she said.
“Those who were earlier getting a pension of Rs 1,000 are now getting Rs 10,000. We’ve also renovated the Press Club. This was only done by this government.”
She added that the physical attacks on journalists were occurring because of personal tussles.
The BJP in-charge for Northeast, Vinod Sonkar, told ThePrint that the allegations of the Tripura government targeting journalists was false. “These are false allegations about the government in order to divert attention from West Bengal,” he said.
ThePrint reached Chief Minister Biplab Deb’s Officer on Special Duty, Sanjay Mishra, through queries over WhatsApp, sent on 20 September. But he did not respond to the messages or the follow-ups.
Also read: 3 days of violence, 42 FIRs — Why Tripura is witness to sudden spurt in political clashes
‘Media under pressure’
Editors and journalists of local newspapers and media channels, however, describe the last three years under Chief Minister Biplab Kumar Deb’s government with frustration, and hinted that they are constantly being monitored.
“If the chief minister’s picture doesn’t go, they raise an issue. His face has to be on any one page of the newspaper. We get a call if we don’t put it in everyday,” claimed an editor of a media house, who wished to remain anonymous.
A senior journalist of another media house, who didn’t wish to be named, also levelled the same allegation.
“The government would send someone to our office if we didn’t publish a picture of Biplab Deb on the website,” the journalist claimed. “They threaten and intimidate us, a lot of our newsagents have gotten into trouble. These people come every other day to the office.”
The media houses alleged that dependence on government advertisements allows a form of censorship to work in the state.
“They don’t give us any advertisements; we survive on the public advertisement and the money that comes in through subscribing to our app,” claimed Anal Roy Choudhury, proprietor-editor of Pratibadi Kalam. “Hathway Cable TV also stopped broadcasting our channel.”
The senior journalist quoted above claimed that an error in a news story that his organisation had covered led to the government curbing their advertisements.
“We had it rectified, but our advertisement was stopped for more than a month…There is a policy but it seems to be in the cold storage,” he alleged. “If we receive our due share of ads, then we can pull on, since there is no viable private sector here.”
The policy he referred to is the Tripura Advertisement Policy that came into effect in 2021. According to the new policy, only newspapers and periodicals that have been approved by the Information and Cultural Affairs Department are entitled to receiving government advertisements.
The benchmark for circulation, revenue and other criteria are decided by an ‘Empowered Advertisement Committee’, which several newspapers are unable to meet.
When talking about the recent attacks, editors ThePrint spoke to recalled an instance from last year when Chief Minister Deb had issued a “threat” to the media over their coverage of the Covid situation.
“History shall not forgive them. And I shall not forgive them. I am a man of my word,” Biplab Kumar Deb had said. Following his speech, two journalists had allegedly faced attacks in different parts of the state. According to a report in The Indian Express, since 2020, 24 cases have been registered for attacks on journalists in Tripura.
“I will 100 per cent blame the BJP for creating this environment, if the CM wants he can stop it since there are only a few miscreants who perpetrate this violence,” Sarkar said.
‘Unimaginable’
Birat Roy Choudhury, the 25-year-old executive head of PB24, describes the events during the 8 September BJP rally — a protest against the CPI(M) — as “unimaginable”.
As the procession passed them by, Birat said leaders of the saffron party who were at the helm could be seen pointing towards their office. “We didn’t really understand what was happening at the time…These leaders walked on. The workers behind us started saying hisab nebo (we will take account of everything),” he said. “They folded up the banner and attacked us.”
The workers first set the car parked outside that belonged to editor Anal Roy Choudhury on fire. Then they moved to the office. Birat, who was inside the building at the time, could hear the mob rampage through.
“I couldn’t imagine something like this would ever happen to us; this is the first time something like this has ever happened to us. This was unimaginable,” he said.
Anal Roy Choudhury’s complaint, based on which an FIR has been lodged, names Tripura BJP vice-president Rajib Bhattacharjee and general secretaries Tinku Roy and Papia Datta. The case has been transferred to the Crime Branch as Roy Choudhury also alleged the involvement of a police officer who was present at the site.
So far no arrests have been made in the case. “This is the initial stage of investigation. The final report will be submitted in court,” said Badal Chandra Saha of the Crime Branch, the lead investigator in the case.
According to Anal Roy Choudhury, the newspaper was targeted as they would often report on scams, which at times implicated leaders of the ruling dispensation. Last year, they covered a Rs 150 crore scam, allegedly involving the Agriculture Department and Agriculture Minister Pranajit Singha Roy.
The newspaper’s report from 5 November last year alleged there were several irregularities in the purchase of fertilisers and seeds by the Agriculture Department. The paper claimed its “investigation” was based on an internal audit of the department that had been conducted from 2013-2020 and sources in the department. It also indicated that Roy is likely to have played a role in the scam, which also allegedly involved several high-ranking officers of the department.
Following the publication of the report in November 2020, 6,000 copies of Pratibadi Kalam that had been dispatched to three districts were taken off passenger buses and destroyed, said Anal Roy Choudhary, who added that there was no reaction from the government or the minister over the scam.
“We carry reports of such scams every month. During the CPI(M) government we also covered another scam involving Manik Sarkar (former CM),” Choudhury said. “We’ve had 800 cases filed against us during the CPI(M) regime and three during the BJP regime.”
“During the CPI(M)’s time, they had, at times, stopped the publishing and printing of the newspaper, but they could have done much more to us especially since our office is located right next to their office,” he added. “But in the last three-and-a-half years, we haven’t been able to report on much.”
Veteran journalist and senior functionary of Tripura Assembly of Journalists Sekhar Dutta alleged, “There has been an unprecedented rise in the attack on journalists, enabled by the hostile environment that the government has created.”
Despite the threats to their lives and livelihoods, however, the journalists and editors said that they were determined to continue doing their jobs.
“I will do this till the day I die,” Anal Roy Choudhury said.
This sentiment was echoed by Sarkar. “If I was afraid, I wouldn’t have been a journalist. Let them attack. Every time they do, we will get up and keep at our jobs,” he said. “The more they do this, the more motivation we have to do our jobs.”
(Edited by Arun Prashanth)
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