Mukesh Chandrakar Murder And The Perils Of Independent Journalism In Bastar

In a video report published on the independent news portal Bastar Live on YouTube, Bastar-based journalist Mukesh Chandrakar, proprietor of the page, reported on the killings of innocent Adivasi villagers by suspected Maoists in Bijapur, a designated ‘Left Wing Extremism-affected district’ of Chhattisgarh. “In the last seven days, eight villagers have been killed by Naxals who are picking them out as “soft targets”, claiming they were  ‘mukhbir’ (spies) of the Indian armed forces,” 𒐪Chandraka🅺r said. That was two weeks ago. It was to be the last video by Chandrakar on Bastar Live. 

On Jan 1, as the nation was still coming out of the stupor of new year celebrations, Chandrakar went missing. In his early thirties, Chandrakar had emerged as a prominent and independent voice of journalism from Bastar, the resource-rich, forested tract of Chhattisgarh, part of India’s so-called “Red Corridor” which has seen years of protracted violence between State security force⛦s and Naxals. On Jan 3, Chandrakar’s battered body was found in the septic tank on the residential premises of a contractor he had been investi🍸gating and had implicated in a story about corruption. 

Why was Chandrakar killed?

Chandrakar had been reporting on a road constructionﷺ project between Gangalur and Nelasnar in Bijapur. A local construction company owned by three brothers - Dinesh, Ritesh and Suresh Chandrakar, who were distantly related to the journalist - was handling a major portion of the road project. While the initial cost of the project was projected as Rs 56 crore, the amount doubled to Rs 120 crore over time.  Moreover, the road which was built was washed away, soon after construction due ꦕto rains.

Chandrakar reported on these discrepan💖cies on his channel and the report was even picked up by TV news channel which highlighted the alleged corruption. 

According to the victim’s older brother Yukesh Chandrakar, on the evening of January 1, Mukesh was invited by the Chandrakar brothers to their home. When he𒉰 did not return home ♐by Jan 2, Yukesh lodged a complaint. The body was eventually discovered the day after. 

Chandrakar’s𝔍 family an🍌d fellow reporters allege the journalist was killed as a result of his investigations. ;

Who was Mukesh Chandrakar?

Born in the remote village of Basaguda in the Naxal-dominated district of Bijapur, Mukesh was the youngest of two brothers. His father passed away when Mukesh was just a toddler and the two brothers were raised by their mother who earned a meagre wage as an Anganwadi worker. In his teens, Mukesh’s family became direct victims of the violence caused by the paramilitary outfit Salwa Judum. His family was displaced a♏nd Mukesh, his brother and mother, started to go live in a refugee camp. In some years, the family was displaced once again and moved on to another refugee camp. Soon after, Mukesh lost his mother to cancer. By this time, Mukesh had followed his older brother Yukesh 🔯into journalism. 

Initially, Mukesh used to work for local newspapers and channels, getting small stories published here and there. The pay was meagre and often, the stories were published without credits. After about a decade of being a “stringer”, Mukesh turned to YouTube and started his own channel Bastar Junction. This was around the same time 2020 onwards when a lot of local journalists were realising the power of social media and had figured it out as a medium to directly communicate their news with their audiences, without having to go thr𓆉ough the checks and measures of Raipur and Delhi newsrooms. 

😼As his work on YouTube became more and more popular, Mukesh started coming in the purview of loca꧂l authorities and powerbrokers including police, politicians, industrialists and contractors. 

Mukesh’s story was published in Outlook’s May 2022 issue ‘N♍otes from the Underground’ in which former Outlook journalist Ahustosh Bharwaj, who has reported extensively from Bastar over the past decades for multiple media 🧸houses including The India Express, wrote about the travails of regional reporters covering Bastar. 

“We village journalists don’t get an adequate salary. Worse, editors kill most of our stories. They don’t understand t🍃he issues of our area. They are driven by other concerns,” Chandrakar had 🌼said. 

Chandrakar’s media career peaked in 2021 when he and some fellow journalists from Bastar, including Ganesh Mishra, managed the𝓡 release of CoBRA jawan Rakeshwar Singh Manhas from Maoist captivity. 

The abduction had become a national headline as Man has had gone missing ✱during a Maoist attack on security forces in which 22 peཧrsonnel were killed. “I and Ganesh Mishra had played a major role in securing his release. National channels were taking my bytes. But unfortunately, at my own channel, my editor-anchor hogged away the space…It was then I felt that if I’ve bigger stories, people would watch me,” Chandrakar had told Outlook at the time.

In May 2021, Chandrakar was one of the first to report on the Silger shooting incident.

In 2024, Bharadwaj commissioned a news report through Chandrakar and another local journalist for publication in the national news portal, The Wire (Hindi). The story covered the arbitrary arrest of four Bastar journalists on allegedly trumped up drug charges after they reported on illegal mining involving BJP leaders. The article suggested that the Chhattisgarh police planted the evidence to frame the journalists, Bhardwaj said at Press Club. “After the story, I got a call from Mukesh asking me, “kuch hoga toh nahin?” (Nothing will happen, right?)” He had apparently received disapproving 🅰messages from the police. 

What happened with Mukesh is perhaps a drastic culmination of these pressures and ▨threats. 

“We have failed journalists like Chandrakar. We should not be here today, commemorating our fellow journalists’ death i꧒n Delhi. We sho♔uld be in Bastar, investigating and reporting from the ground, hand in hand with our comrades,” Bhardwaj lamented at an event held at Press Club on India in Delhi to commemorate and mourn the slain journalist.

Reporting from Bastar: An abandoned story

With its rich iron ore resources and impoverished♛ Adivasi populations caught in the crossfire of a protracted and violent civil war that has stretched on for decades, Bastar is perhaps one of the hardest regions in India to report from💃. “But we have abandoned Bastar. In recent years, there has been no real reporting from Bastar. National journalists need to reclaim Bastar and not just put the entire onus on journalism on the local reporters who live with multiple vulnerabilities,” Bhardwaj said.

Speaking at the event, senior journalists like Urmilesh who has reported extensively from Bastar in the past recalled the sheer difficulty of survival and life in Bastar, let alone working as a journalist. “Journalists based comfortably in Delhi or other metro cities often fail to grasp the difficulties of grassroots reporting from Bastar. These ground reporters are often considered second or even third, fourth rate journalists,” Urmilesh said. “It is, however, the ground reporter from rural regions or conflict zones who not �🅠�only reports on stories that would otherwise remain unreported but actually lives the realities of the area”. 

Many of these ground reporters from Bastar like Sumaru Nath, Prabhat Singh, Santosh Yadav who previously reported from Bastar have faced sanctions and arrests for alleged links with Maoists and have been unable to return to journalism after incidents of arrests and detentions. Yadav, for example, had been arrested and spent 17 months in jail after a police personnel claimed he saw Yadav standing behind a Maoist𝄹 fighter during an ambush. Yadav had been reporting on the story. 

Apart from the police, journalists in Bastar face pressure from the Naxals as well who expect reports to cover their side of the story and often react punitively against scribes they consider🌃 as pro-government. In 2016, journalist Malini Subramaniam had to flee Bastar following a mob attack at her home. In 2013, another journalist Sai Reddy was killed by Maoists on suspicions of being a police informer. Ironically, Reddy had been arrested a few years earlier for supporting the Maoists.

While such conditions have always existed in Bastar, Urmilesh noted that Chandrakar’s killing was not only a “Bastar problem” but rather a reflection of the state of press freedom and democracy across the country. 

Journalists Condemn Killing, Demand Stricter Laws

In a statement, press bodies like the Press Club of🐬 India (PCI) Women’s Press Corpse (IWPC) noted that though attacks and killing of journalists was not new in Bastar, the “ impunity with which such incidents are being carried out is unacceptable”. The bodies have called for stricter laws at a national level to 🐲protect journalists. 

“Mukesh’s murder is not just the murder of a single journalist but murder of journalism and the murder of the Constitution’s Article 19 (1A) which ensures freedom of expression and speech to people,𝓰” newly-elected PCI President Gautam Lahiri said.

“This incident is a wake up call for all journalists and civil society across India to take the resolve to protect independent journalists from attacks by holding the government accountable for the protection of journalists,” Lahiri added, while speaking at Press ꦦClub. “Just holding mourning vigils is not enough”. 

Ahea🍷d of the PCI elections, members of PCI and other press bodies together proposed a draft media policy, aimed at protection of journalists. The draft, which was set to undergo consultations and reviews from a wide range of media persons and bodies, would൩ lay out the role of the journalist fraternity, media houses as well as the government and law enforcing authorities to ensure safety and integrity of journalists. 

“M෴edia is said to be the fourth estate of democracy. So how can journalists be under so much threat in a country that claims to be “the mother of democracy”? Lahiri noted.

This is♛ not the first time journalists have demanded for laws to protect journalists, especially in Chhattisgarh, which has seen persisting violence between﷽ state and non-state actors. 

In its 2018 election manifesto, for Assembly election in November, the State’s then-ruling Congress party had promised journalists a law within 100 days if it came to power. In 2019, a draft Bill to safeguard mediapersons in Chhattisgarh from harassment, intimidation and violence was introduced under then Bhupesh Baghel government. 

The draft Chhattisgarh Protection of Mediapersons Act proposed that within 30 days of enactment of the law, “the government shall constitute a Committee for the Prot♋ection of Mediapersons to deal with complaints of harassment, intimidation or violence, or unfair prosecution and arrests of media persons”.

In 2023, the Chhattisgarh Legislative Assembly passed the 'Chhattisgarh Mediapersons Protection Bill 2023’. The bill had be﷽en tabled in the House for discussion by Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel, who termed the day 'historic'.

The recent incident, however, showcases the failure of the law to safeguard journalists. R, an iღndependent journalist from Dantewada, Bastar, said (on condition of anonymity) that the problem with such laws is that it “puts the very peo𒁃ple endangering journalists’ safety in charge of protecting them”. The incident thus begs the question - are laws enough?

India has consistently been falling behind in the press freedom index. Following a declining trend that emerged in 2017, India's preꦅss freedom rank dropped further to 159 out of 180 countries surveyed in the World Press Freedom Index released by Reporters Without Borders in 2024.