(FNJ/IFEX) – On 4 May 2006, at approximately 8:00 p.m. (local time), members of the army mistreated and beat Ganesh Rai, a reporter with the daily newspaper “Kantipur”; Deepak Bhattarai, news coordinator of Kantipur Television (KTV); cameraman Shyam Shrestha; Rajneesh Bhattarai, intern reporter of KTV; and journalist Bimal Gautam as they were reporting on an […]
(FNJ/IFEX) – On 4 May 2006, at approximately 8:00 p.m. (local time), members of the army mistreated and beat Ganesh Rai, a reporter with the daily newspaper “Kantipur”; Deepak Bhattarai, news coordinator of Kantipur Television (KTV); cameraman Shyam Shrestha; Rajneesh Bhattarai, intern reporter of KTV; and journalist Bimal Gautam as they were reporting on an accident that took place after a Royal Nepalese Army (RNA) ambulance, with license plate number Ba 1 Ja 7032, hit a passenger mini-bus coming from Bhaktapur at Babar Mahal.
According to “Kantipur”, the soldiers tried to seize a camera from the reporters and to pull the film from it. “They attacked us and targeted our camera,” said Bhattarai. “When they failed to extract the film, they tried to take the media persons in their van.”
The Federation of Nepalese Journalists (FNJ) severely condemns the incident and demands an unbiased investigation into it.