Caught between the Naxalites and the police for long, Sai Reddy"a rural journalist who earned the wrath both the rebels and the police in the conflict zone of tribal Bastar"was killed by the Maoists on Friday afternoon near a market in Basaguda in Bijapur district of Chhattisgarh.
Police said Reddy, who is in his early 50s, had gone to Basaguda when a group of Maoists attacked him with sharp edged weapons near the market and fled from the spot. The journalist, who was lying in a pool of blood, was rushed to district headquarters of Bijapur but he succumbed to his injuries on his way to the hospital.
"This is the second incident in the recent past in which Maoists killing journalists. In February this year, a journalist Nemichand Jain was killed by the rebels in Sukma. Forty five days after the murder, Maoists had apologized for Jain's killing", Bastar's journalist association president S Karimuddin told TOI.
"In 2008, Sai Reddy was arrested by the police and kept in jail under the state's much-debated Chhattisgarh Special Security Act, accusing him of having links with the Maoists. On the other hand, Maoists had set his house ablaze and had threatened him suspecting him to be a sympathizer of the security forces", he said adding that the association strongly condemned the Maoist attack on journalists in Bastar.
Journalists in Bijapur said Sai Reddy had been receiving threats from the Maoists even after he was released after the court due to lack of any evidence against him.
Reddy's detention under the controversial law came to national limelight after activists mounted an international campaign for release of Peoples Union for Civil Liberties (PUCL) leader Dr Binayak Sen, who was also arrested and jailed under the same law.
Reddy a resident of Basaguda in Naxalite-hit Bijapur district, was arrested in March 2008. Police claimed that he was detained after an arrested Naxalite, Rambabu, revealed he had "connections" with him and that Naxals took their ration from a shop run by his wife.
Like many journalists in Bastar, Reddy too earned his living selling grain and minor forest produce while contributing to local newspapers. His writings on Naxal violence in the region earned him the wrath of both Maoists and security forces. On one occasion, the rebels had threatened to kill him and his family if he didn't leave Chhattisgarh. The rebels blew up his house, forcing him to flee to Cherlapal in neighbouring Andhra Pradesh. Reddy's friends said then his family had to apologize to the Maoists before he could return home.
Government authorities too were after Reddy as he would often rake up the problems of Basaguda, an area government officials were reluctant to visit because of the strong Maoist presence. In 1998, the authorities had booked Reddy under the Essential Commodities Act but the case against him fell flat during the first hearing itself, local journalists said.
When the controversial anti-naxalite movement Salwa Judum was at its peak between June 2005 and 2008, Reddy refused to openly support the anti-naxalite vigilante group which later began targeting him accusing him of being a Maoist sympathizer.
Journalists in the conflict zone of Bastar are sandwiched between the security forces and the Maoists. There were instances in places like Dantewada were journalists had quietly to leave Bastar after being threatened either by the Maoists or by the local police.