In his 22 years in journalism, Yogesh Pawar can recall many instances when he was abused, physically assaulted, and even came close to death in 2001 as a result of his reporting on the powerful and well-connected.
“I had gone to report on a communal flare-up in a district in Maharashtra along with a photojournalist but the police denied us any access to victim’s family,” the 48-year-old tells Splice.
Not one to give up easily, Pawar and his colleague found a way to visit the family by taking a different route.
“We had been talking to the family for about 45 minutes before the police got wind of us [being] there,” he recalls.
“We were beaten and forcefully pushed into a police jeep, taken to the outskirts of a sugarcane field, where we [were] hit some more. The inspector pulled out his gun threatening to shoot us, asking us what we had heard and what we were going to write,” Pawar says.
Read full story on The Splice Newsroom