“Soft-spoken, decent, but tremendously brave and professionally committed,” this is how Samir Dhar, honorary editor-in-chief of Agartala-based news channel 'Din Raat' remembers Santanu Bhowmik, who was lynched on Wednesday while covering a road blockade agitation of the IPFT.
Bhowmik had gone to Mandai, around 25km from the Tripura capital, to report the agitation and road blockade by the Indigenous People's Front of Tripura (IPFT) when he was hit from behind and abducted. Later, Bhowmick was found with serious stab injuries and was rushed to the Agartala Medical College and Hospital where doctors declared him brought dead.
Superintendent of Police of West district Abhijit Saptarshi said the situation at Mandai was already tense. Prohibitory orders under section 144 Crpc were already in force in the area and more police forces were being rushed to there. Over a hundred activists of the Gana Mukti Parishad (GMP), the tribal wing of the ruling CPI-M, were on Tuesday injured in a clash with the IPFT at Chhankhola area of Khowai district, about 40 km from Agartala.
“On Wednesday morning, Santanu came to know that the IPFT, which has been demanding a separate tribal state called Tipraland, was holding an agitation in Mandai. Soon, he along with a freelance videojournalist rushed to the spot from his residence in Jirania, which is around 7.5 km from Mandai,” Dhar told Outlook from Agartala.
Bhowmik then sent the channel a few exclusive footage of the blockade.
“It was around 1.15 pm, Santanu called up one of our colleagues, saying he was reaching the office soon. This was the last time he spoke to us,” said Dhar, who is also the Tripura bureau chief of Kolkata-based Bengali newspaper Aaj Kal.
According to Dhar, from the agitation site Bhowmik returned to his home for lunch. Around 3 pm, as he was leaving for the office, the journalist received information that members of the IPFT were setting some vehicles ablaze.
“Without informing us, he went back to that place, hoping for more exclusive footage. While making some video clips on his mobile phone, he came close to the agitators. That is when he was ‘gheraoed’ by the protestors despite a thick police presence. They first hit Santanu on his leg with a heavy object. When he fell down, they dragged him inside a nearby stadium, where they lynched him,” said the editor, adding that Santanu’s passion for work proved “too costly”.
Dhar added that the attackers even took away his mobile phone, which could have been a vital evidence in the murder case.
Din Raat was launched in April this year. "I still remember, Santanu had come for a job interview. He was very polite, but looked really impressive. He had previously worked with two other local channels," he said.
‘He exposed IPFT’
Santanu was among the first journalists in the state who had reported that the IPFT was politically backed. “He loved investigative stories”, recalls Dhar.
“Ever since he had joined the Din Raat -- a cable channel -- in April, he had been extensively covering the IPFT,” he added.
Was he on the hit-list?
“Probably,” Tanmoy Chakraborty, an Agartala-based senior correspondent for News18, told Outlook.
“He was fearless. Perhaps, he was the only journalist who had comprehensively covered the earlier blockade called by the IPFT on July 10 that had led to a serious shortage of essential items, including food grain. He had become a popular reporter,” said Chakraborty, who was Santanu’s senior colleague when the latter started his journalism career with ‘Khabar 365’, a local Bengali news channel, in 2013.
Opened a nursery school for poor children
“Santanu would tell me, ‘I want to work for the poor’. He even opened a nursery school for poor children near his house and used to teach there. It shows his humanity… I can’t believe he is no more with us,” said Dhar as his voice chokes.
The young scribe is survived by his mother, a government clerk, and his younger sister, who studies in Sikkim.
Separate state demand
The IPFT has been agitating since 2009 for a separate state to be carved out by upgrading the Tripura Tribal Areas Autonomous District Council, which has jurisdiction over two-thirds of Tripura’s 10,491 sq km area, home to over 12,16,000 people, mostly tribals.
Most political parties, including the ruling Communist Party of India-Marxist, Congress, BJP and other tribal parties including Indigenous Nationalist Party of Tripura (INPT) have rejected the IPFT’s demand, saying it was not practical to divide the small state.
