NEW DELHI — An Indian TV news reporter was abducted and killed while covering a protest rally in the remote northeastern state of Tripura, the second journalist to be killed in the country this month, police said Thursday.
Shantanu Bhowmick, who was working for the “Dinraat” (“Day and Night”) news show, was reporting on a road blockade by a political party representing indigenous tribal people when he was abducted late Wednesday, said state police chief A.K. Shukla.
Bhowmick was later found with multiple stab wounds and died before he could be taken to a hospital, Shukla said.
Police arrested four members of the Indigenous People’s Front of Tripura in connection with Bhowmick’s killing.
Journalist organizations held protest meetings in different cities in India on Thursday, condemning the attack on the 27-year-old journalist and calling it an assault on freedom of the press.
“Northeast India has long been a zone of impunity where various militant groups have threatened, attacked, and often killed journalists trying to do their jobs,” the Foundation of Media Professionals said in a statement.
Political parties and security forces were known to intimidate journalists in the many conflict zones that dot the region, the media group said.
Bhowmick was the second journalist to be killed in India this month. Gauri Lankesh, editor of a weekly and a fierce critic of Hindu hard-liners, was shot and killed outside her home in Bangalore on Sept. 5. No arrests have been made.