She covered these stories for her media venture, the online platform Mojo Story.
She travelled 30,000 kilometres in the lockdown, across multiple Indian states, to see the havoc the pandemic was wreaking, carrying in its frantic wake stories of death, tragedy, suffering, hope, and recovery.
#MOJO BARKHA DUTT SERIES#
Interview Series Business In The Week Ahead.We hope the governments around the country and in this case especially Uttar Pradesh, can do the same. We take our accountability as the fourth pillar of democracy very seriously and conduct ourselves in the most responsible fashion. The news media that DigiPub represents will not be intimidated and prevented from reporting the truth, however inconvenient it may be for anyone. Intimidating the press using enforcement agencies and lodging FIRs, often in ways that push the boundaries of legality needs to stop. This is no way for a responsible and a mature democracy to function. Recently, UP police arrested Siddiqui Kappan for reporting on Hathras gangrape under Section 17 of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act. In this case, the sections used by the UP police allow for jail upto a year. This is not the first time such attempts have been made to stop journalists from reporting, but it has become a pattern which needs to be addressed immediately by the government of Uttar Pradesh and the center needs to take a note. The news platform has said it has not reported anything of the kind. The platform has also called out the police for clubbing them with politicians who had suggested falsely that the girls had been raped. The police denial on this was also reported. Mojo Story has been penalised for reporting what the families of the dalit girls told their reporter, that the police had been in favour of an early cremation but the families insisted otherwise. To challenge the claims, they asked for a copy of FIR which was refused by Unnao Police without which Mojo Story cannot appeal for a legal intervention. Mojo Story in their tweet, denied these claims and cleared their stand on the news saying that inputs were given by a local reporter followed by a report by a Delhi correspondent. Not only this, Unnao SP Anand Kulkarni also threatened further action. “What is most outrageous is that the FIR by Unnao police is a clear and deliberate attempt at muzzling journalists and keeping them from doing their jobs.
#MOJO BARKHA DUTT FULL#
Responding to this, DigiPub has said that this is “outright false.” Read the full statement below: The FIR that was registered under Section 153 of the IPC (Wantonly giving provocation with intent to cause riot) and Section 66 of the Information and Technology Act, claimed that false information was spread by the named journalists. According to the police, the post mortem did not show sexual assault. The Unnao Police had also filed a case against some Twitter users for allegedly spreading “false information” that the girls had also been raped. Calling it “a blatant case of harassment and intimidation,” Mojo Story maintained that their report was based on the girls’ families’ statements. However, Mojo Story has denied this allegation. The UP Police had claimed that Barkha Dutt’s Mojo Story had wrongly reported that the police had rushed to perform the last rites of the two deceased girls despite objections from the girls’ families.