Lawfare – Journalists

Days after a senior editor of Ranchi-based Hindi daily Prabhat Khabar wrote to Chief Minister Hemant Soren on threat calls being made to its chief editor Ashutosh Chaturvedi over the paper’s coverage on liquor mafia in the state, an FIR has been registered against Chaturvedi and three others for forgery and printing materials known to be defamatory among other charges.

On December 29, Vijay Kant Pathak, the resident editor of Prabhat Khabar, had written to the CM that Chaturvedi received a call from a person named Yogendra Tiwari, who is lodged in the Birsa Munda Central Jail, and was threatened over some recent reports naming him. Tiwari is an accused in a money laundering case for allegedly channeling profits made from illegal sand smuggling into liquor business.