Risking It All

On 3 January, the dead body of a journalist from Bastar, Mukesh Chandrakar, was found in a septic tank in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur. His autopsy revealed that he was brutally murdered, with several head fractures, heart ripped out and a broken neck. The accused, Suresh Chandrakar, who was also Mukesh’s close relative, was a contractor who had made a fortune through corruption and was exposed by Mukesh. The slain journalist was investigating a road project worth R120 crore, the initial budget for which was R56 crore but was later doubled. Mukesh used to report for platforms like NDTV, and also ran his own YouTube channel, Bastar Junction. His murder is the most recent, and most extreme, example of what journalists face while reporting from the Bastar region.

According to Mangal Kunjam, an Adivasi journalist from Bastar, journalists working in the region can be broadly categorised into four groups: journalists by profession, part-time journalists, stringers and news agents, and guest reporters. Most reporters in Bastar are from the second and third category. This means they have no security, lack a formal contract with the news organisations they work with and receive little to no support from media houses. This creates a cycle of exploitation wherein local journalists or stringers do most of the work while the credit goes to the mainstream media.

Mukesh belonged to a Scheduled Caste community, and had been reporting on local issues for his YouTube channel since the 2021 Silger protest against an army camp, where four protestors were allegedly killed in police firing. Bastar Junction, like many other media platforms, often covered stories that tried to sensationalise news about Maoist insurgents and security forces, but Mukesh’s murder raises deeper questions about militarisation, development, corruption and journalistic practices in the region. The news story that exposed Suresh’s corruption in the road project was being pursued for a journalist from NDTV. Yet it was Mukesh who, as a local journalist, paid the price.

South Chhattisgarh or Bastar division is a highly sensitive resource-rich region, marked by excessive militarisation and human-rights violations amid mining and other development activities. Given the immensity of these issues and the region’s relative inaccessibility, many big media houses rely on local journalists for grassroots reporting. Local journalists often find themselves caught between the union and state governments’ forces and Maoists, facing threats from both sides. Journalists who seek to expose corruption in the local government’s schemes—involving a nexus of corrupt officials, police and contractors—face heightened risks and complications in their work.