23 March 1999
THREE JOURNALISTS MURDERED THIS YEAR
Three journalists have been murdered in India this year, reports the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ). On 20 March, Anil Rattan, a free-lance journalist and former correspondent for the Hong Kong-based magazine "AsiaWeek", was found dead in his apartment. Police say that Rattan's body was discovered in his bathroom on 20 March "in a highly decomposed condition," and estimate that he was killed around 18 March. CPJ reports, "According to police reports, Rattan had been stabbed several times and strangled either with a length of wire found lying near the body or with his undershirt." On 13 March, police found the body of Irfan Hussain, a sometimes controversial political cartoonist for the English-language news magazine "Outlook", near a highway in New Delhi. His body showed signs of extreme torture.
Rattan's murder bears striking similarities to the 23 January killing of Shivani Bhatnagar, an investigative reporter for the English-language daily newspaper "The Indian Express" who was stabbed repeatedly and strangled with a piece of wire in her East Delhi apartment. CPJ says it "is concerned that criminal investigations in India are too rarely completed, and that killers are therefore seldom brought to justice. Journalists across India have expressed the fear that they are increasingly vulnerable to attack when criminals know they can act with impunity." CPJ urges the government to order the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI), the country's federal intelligence agency, to take on the cases of the three journalists.
RSS