In Chhattisgarh, journalist Mukesh Chandrakar was brutally hacked to death. As per initial investigation, Congress leader and VP of party’s state SC Cell, Suresh Chandrakar is the main accused in this case and he was arrested earlier this week from Hyderabad.
From the doctor who conducted the post-mortem to everyone who viewed the post-mortem report, all were shaken by the brutality of the murder and the grisly details that the autopsy revealed.
However, Darbari journalists have stooped to a new level and are exploiting the death of a member of their fraternity to please their masters. One among them is India Today’s Rajdeep Sardesai who started this year by apologising to the Gandhi scion for ruffling the wrong feathers rather than standing upright against a chilling assault on Press freedom.
Clarification: Reference to my comments on the recent Neta Nagri show on @TheLallantop paying tribute to Dr Manmohan Singh where I referred to @RahulGandhi ‘tearing up’ UPA 2 government ordinance on convicted legislators. At a press meet in 2013, Rahul Gandhi called the UPA…
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) December 31, 2024
Instead of condemning the accused Congress leader and demanding strict punishment, Sardesai prioritised sycophancy of the grand old party rather than a deceased fellow journalist, Mukesh Chandrakar.
Unlike Rajdeep Sardesai who keeps cribbing and playing victim for speaking truth to power, Mukesh Chandrakar laid his life in the tryst of journalism.
Unlike Sardesai, Mukesh didn’t have relationships with powerful politicians nor attended their parties. But his conscience was alive. So, is it acceptable to politicise his brutal murder? Should political capital be made over his dead body? If so, such people should consider leaving journalism and joining parties that play politics over bodies.
To defend Congress, Rajdeep Sardesai wrote on X (formerly Twitter), “The main accused in the murder of journalist Mukesh Chandrakar, Suresh Chandrakar, was a Congress member. Former Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel claims he recently joined the BJP. It is clear that the murder was committed to hide corruption in a road contract, a well-known source of corruption that thrives under the protection of the state government. The culprits should be immediately punished, regardless of their party affiliation. Mukesh should get justice.”
In the first line of his post, Rajdeep stated that the accused, Suresh Chandrakar, had already left Congress. However, in the second line, he mentions this claim through Bhupesh Baghel. By now, it is well known that Suresh Chandrakar is a Congress leader.
It is a well established fact that Suresh was the vice president of the SC wing of Chhattisgarh Congress. He was sent as an observer for the Maharashtra elections, and was made in charge of three districts during the 2023 Chhattisgarh elections.
Any journalist worth his salt must be aware of the main accused association with the Congress party, it is beyond the realm of possibilities that Rajdeep Sardesai being the notorious yet a prominent face in the fraternity would have been oblivious to these facts.
Despite this, Rajdeep’s attempt to defend Congress seems more like the work of a party spokesperson or an IT cell member trying to please their masters.
It would have been better if Rajdeep, as a journalist, had used the opportunity to discuss what bolstered Suresh Chandrakar to kill a journalist for exposing the ongoing corruption deal in road construction. It would have been more appropriate if Rajdeep had highlighted how a 10th-grade fail like Suresh Chandrakar became powerful enough to arrive at his wedding in a helicopter.
Even if Rajdeep hadn’t explained all that, just focusing on how a poor and honest journalist was brutally murdered by a Congress leader would have made him appear more like a journalist. But instead, Rajdeep chose to distort the truth and protect Congress by spreading the false claim that Suresh Chandrakar was no longer a Congress member.
