(IJU) expressed serious concern at the threat received by a journalist and urged the government to go to the bottom of the issue to bring the culprits to book

Hyderabad, 12 December 2022: The Indian Journalists Union (IJU) expressed serious concern at the threat received by a journalist and urged the government to go to the bottom of the issue to bring the culprits to book. In a statement issued on Monday IJU President K. Sreenivas Reddy and Secretary General Balwinder Singh Jammu said Santosh Singh Gill, working for Punjabi Tribune from Ludhiana has been threatened by a caller from US that they would kill him.

Prior to this Gill, a bold journalist wrote a story in Tribune on a controversy involving fake IDs issued by three farmers unions to non formers to enable them avoid paying toll charges. It is quite possible that publication of this story provoked someone to resort to issue threats, the IJU leaders said. They said in the present violence prone environment these threats could not be taken lightly and the police should identify the caller immediately.

The IJU leaders also along with Maharashtra State Union of Working Journalists (MSUWJ) condemned the the way Maharashtra police arrested Govind Wakade, a TV journalist from Pimpri Cinchwad at the dead of the night just because he filmed the ink attack on Maharashtra minister Chandrakant Patil. That the minister suspected the timing of the filming is not enough ground to treat a journalist as a hardcore criminal, the IJU leaders commented.