Another journalist killed in Uttar Pradesh

Sanjay Pathak, a stringer reporter for a local Hindi daily in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly district, was killed brutally by two persons in Faridpur area in the district in the early hours on Friday.

According to the police sources here, a police team, which was on patrol duty, saw two people dragging a body on the Station Road around 2 am in the morning and gave them a chase.

While one of them managed to escape, the other man, identified as Ram Bahadur, was nabbed.

Police said that Pathak was hit several times on the head with some heavy object and might have died of excessive bleeding. “The motive behind the killing is yet to be ascertained...the accused is being interrogated,” said a senior district police official in Bareilly.

The body has been sent for post-mortem examination and a massive manhunt had been launched to nab the other culprit. Police sources said that 42-year-old Pathak, who was a resident of Baxariya locality in Faridpur, was seen with his friends near his home on Thursday night.

Pathak’s killing comes close on the heels of the murder of a web journalist Jagendra Singh in Shahajahanpur district in UP. Singh was allegedly burnt to death at the behest of a UP minister for writing against the latter on social media.

UP government later gave Rs 30 lakh to the family members and showered other freebies on them. Singh’s family, a few days back, made a U-turn and claimed that Jagendra had committed self-immolation.

Several journalists have come under attack in different parts of UP. A local scribe was attacked and nearly killed allegedly by the mining mafia in Chitrakoot district a few months back. Before that another scribe was dragged on the road by goons after tying him to a motor bike in Pilibhit district.