India must ensure media freedom if it wants to live up to its reputation as the world’s largest democracy alongside being a global economic powerhouse.
Eight journalists working in Kashmir have received threat from terrorists online and four of them have reportedly resigned from their jobs, Union Minister of State for Home Nityanand Rai said in the Rajya Sabha today.
The Resistance Front (TRF), which according to the Jammu and Kashmir Police is a front for the Pakistan-based designated global terror organisation Lashkar-e-Tayyiba (LeT), has purportedly named as many as 32 Srinagar-based mediapersons as “paid agents and collaborators” of different Indian police, security and intelligence agencies. It has claimed to have compiled a hit list of 76 Kashmiri journalists.
On Tuesday, five journalists resigned after a militant organisation put out a list of mediapersons, accusing them of being informers of security forces.
In the backdrop of recent threats to Kashmir-based journalists, an intelligence report noted that LeT terrorist Mukthar Baba, who now operates from Turkey.