(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the 29 June 2004 attack by militant Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the offices of the daily “Mahanagar” in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). During the raid, the BJP militants assaulted three journalists and ransacked the premises. Journalists Yuvraj Mohite, Jayesh Shirsat and Vaishali Rode were all slightly […]
(RSF/IFEX) – RSF has condemned the 29 June 2004 attack by militant Hindu nationalists of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on the offices of the daily “Mahanagar” in Mumbai (formerly Bombay). During the raid, the BJP militants assaulted three journalists and ransacked the premises. Journalists Yuvraj Mohite, Jayesh Shirsat and Vaishali Rode were all slightly injured.
The organisation pointed out that it was the fifth such attack on “Mahanagar” in the last 15 years, all of which have gone unpunished. The planned attack targeted a media outlet that has repeatedly stood out against the growing extremism of certain political parties, RSF said.
The organisation called on the head of government in Maharashtra State, Shri Sushilkumar Shinde, to hold an official investigation to find and punish the perpetrators and those who ordered the attack.
The young BJP militants who raided the offices of the daily on 29 June were looking for the paper’s editor-in-chief, Nikhil Wagle, who was out of the office at the time. Frustrated by his absence, they assaulted the journalists who were present. The paper’s premises are located opposite a police post, but the security forces did not intervene.
The raid allegedly came in reprisal for the publication, three days earlier, of an article about prostitutes in Pandharpur, near Mumbai. Wagle told RSF that the BJP was seeking revenge for the paper’s critical coverage of the party during recent general elections. The local leaders were apparently looking for scapegoats to blame for their electoral defeat.
The militant Hindu nationalists accuse the editor-in-chief of being “pro-Muslim” and “anti-nationalist.” The state’s interior affairs minister visited the offices after the attack and promised that the state government would do everything possible to arrest those responsible.
Police arrested nine people, some of them BJP staff members, in Mumbai. They were all placed in custody. The federal police (CID) were put in charge of the investigation.
Over the past six months, crews working for television stations Zee News and Sahara have been attacked while working in Mumbai.
