Reporters Without Orders Ep 379: UP police’s half encounters, govt ads in Kashmiri newspapers

Reporters Without Orders

This week, host Shivnarayan Rajpurohit is joined by Newslaundry’s Avdhesh Kumar and Sumedha Mittal.

Avdhesh talks about his first story in the series ‘Half Encounter’, or what the Uttar Pradesh Police call “Operation Langda”, which is a practice where police shoot suspects in the leg to capture them alive. Once hit, the accused collapses, and the police make the arrest.

“Hemant, a young DJ from Mathura, was wrongfully picked up by UP police and shot in the leg,” says Avdesh, who elaborated on the details of the fake encounter. He said 9,467 suspects were shot in the leg by UP police under the operation since 2017.

Sumedha discusses her report, which reveals that the LG of Jammu and Kashmir spent Rs 70 crore on print ads, with Rs 12 crore worth of ads given to just five newspapers. “There is a concern over the discrimination in how ad money is distributed in Kashmir. The top three dailies that received the most ad money had overwhelmingly pro-LG Manoj Sinha and pro-Modi coverage,” she said.

Avdesh also talks about his coverage of the recent protests by SSC students and teachers over multiple last-minute exam cancellations, the selection of a blacklisted vendor, failure to issue admit cards on time, and poor administrative coordination.

Timecodes:

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:01:10 - Half Encounter Story

00:16:21 - Kashmir Newspaper Ads

00:26:11 - SSC protests

00:31:08 - Half Encounter

00:32:30 - Recommendations

Avdhesh

Annihilation of Caste - Dr. BR Ambedkar

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Sumedha

Saiyaara

Shivnarayan

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