Impunity Spotlight: INDIA
Jagendra Singh, Freelance
Murdered: June 8, 2015, in Shahjahanpur district, Uttar Pradesh, India
Jagendra Singh, a freelance journalist who reported critically on politics and current affairs in Hindi-language newspapers and on Facebook, died from burn injuries he sustained after a police raid at his home on June 1, local reports said.
While being treated in hospital for burns covering more than half of his body, Singh made a statement to a police officer, Amitabh Thakur, in which he said another police officer, Sriprakash Rai, had doused him in petrol and set him on fire, the Press Trust of India reported.
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India is #14 on CPJ’s 2015 Impunity Index, which calculates the number of unsolved journalist murders as a percentage of each country’s population. This month CPJ is highlighting cases from each of the 14 countries on the list ahead of the International Day to End Impunity on November 2.
INDIA:
Of the 11 journalist murders CPJ has confirmed as work-related in the last 10 years in India, all have been carried out with complete impunity, securing India’s spot on the Impunity Index for the eighth year in a row. Nearly all the victims reported on corruption or politics, like freelance journalist Jagendra Singh, who died from burn wounds in June. Singh reported on politics and illegal mining activities in Uttar Pradesh. In a statement before his death, he alleged that police set him on fire at the behest of a local government minister. India’s unrelenting impunity is fostering an increasingly dangerous climate for journalists. Just days after Singh’s murder, another journalist was beaten and dragged behind a motorcycle, and a reporter in West Bengal went missing, among other assaults. The Press Council of India, a statutory body, has called for a two-minute news blackout on November 2 to protest impunity in recent attacks against journalists.
IMPUNITY INDEX RATING: 0.008 unsolved journalist murders per million inhabitants
LAST YEAR: Ranked 13th with a rating of 0.006
