Drive to uncover the truth marked by many a danger

For regional journalists, who brave all odds for a story, experience is the only teacher and while work brings influence, it also puts them at risk

- Ritesh Mishra

RAIPUR: It was 10.17 am on January 6, and the phone wouldn't stop ringing. Forty-year-old Ganesh Mishra's hands moved glacially towards the device. He had been up for six hours, but truth be told, he had not really slept for five days. Not since he was first told that Mukesh Chandrakar had gone missing on New Year's Day; not since he and other journalist colleagues in the small town of Bijapur had launched a man-hunt for their friend, their hopes dimming every hour; not since at 5 pm on January 2, when he watched, his heart racing, as Chandrakar's body was pulled out of a freshly laid cement pit, in the home of a contractor whose corrupt dealings the slain journalist had exposed. Not since then.

Mishra picked up and he knew instantly that his grief, or any designs on a campaign for justice, would have to wait. There had been an IED explosion on the Kutru-Bedra road, 40 kilometers away from Bijapur. The informant said Maoists targeted a security convoy, returning from the forests of Bastar after an anti-insurgency operation. A van was blown apart. There were likely casualties. As a journalist who had reported conflict for 22 years, Mishra knew that another big day on the job was just beginning.

His brain quickly began to work out the logistics. The spot was on a motorable road so the quickest way there would be by car. Mishra owned only a motorcycle. He dialled a colleague, P Ranjan Das, but Das could think of nobody that had a four-wheeler available. He called another friend and journalist Chetan Kapewar, but there was no response.

Eventually, after multiple phone calls, he arranged a car from a friend, and Mishra left. He was to pick up Das en route. As always, he didn't tell his wife and three children where he was going. There was no need for them to worry. In any case, since Chandrakar's killing, the family hadn't really slept either.