A Journalist As Breaking News!

- Preetha Nair

For more than a month now, Ran­jita Elangbam has been getting hundreds of phone calls from unknown numbers and strangers speaking in “strange languages”. She also gets the feeling of being foll­ owed—the creepy sensation of unseen people watching her from the shad­ows, vehicles pulling up besides her on the road and then zipping away. And all these started after her husband, journalist Kishorechandra Wangk­ hem, was arrested under the draco­nian National Security Act (NSA) for criticising chief minister N. Biren Singh in a Facebook post. He has since been sentenced to jail for a year as the government considers him a “threat to the security of the state”. Critics and activists say it is yet another attempt by the BJP governments—in Manipur and in Delhi—to stifle dissent and free speech. But the unfazed state govern­ment has refused to back off.

Beyond the obvious is what many see as the right-wing’s attempt to push its own version of nationalism in the Northeast, a sliver of a landmass in India’s far-east where many identify their Indianness in the context of their own tribe or community. Kishorechandra, 39, could have been doing precisely that when, on November 19 last year, he uploaded a video on Facebook, calling the chief minister a “puppet” of Prime Minister Narendra Modi. Using expletives in this video, Kishorechandra went on to criticise Biren Singh for organising a function to commemorate Laxmibai, the queen of Jhansi, who, the journalist said, had no role in the freedom movement of Manipur. Kishorechandra, a father of two girls, was working as an anchor -reporter with ISTV, a local news channel.