Press Club of India condemns the murder of journalist Shantanu Bhowmick, demands immediate arrest of culprits

SUNIL NEGI
The Press Club Of India today organised a joint meeting with various other media organisations and strongly condemned the brutal murder of the electronic media journalist Shantanu Bhowmik in Tripura two days ago and termed it as an attempt to stifle the voice of free speech and expression.
The well attended meeting by journalists, intellectuals and social activists in one voice expressed their severe criticism, concern and shock over such dastardly acts of violence and murders of scribes in various parts of the country and urged upon the governments to put stop on them by stringently punishing such criminals under the strictest sections of the law. Prominent amongst those who spoke on this occassion were senior journalist a prominent anchor Rajdeep Sardesai , President of the Press Club Gautam Lahari, Secretary General Vinay Kumar, president of Press Association Jai Shankar Gupt and president of women press corps Aditi Tandon.
While addressing the gathering Rajdeep Sardesai expressed his serious concern and shock over the repeated ocurences of such barbaric acts of violence against journalists first against Gauri Lankesh and lateron against 27 year old Shantanu Bhowmik and shockingly the ruling political establishments at the states and centre are still notable to bring the culprits to justice. He condemned such brutal acts of cold blooded murders of outspoken journalists and termed it as a forcible act of gaggling the voice of free press. Sardesai, PCI and Women Press Corps office bearers jointly demanded institution of CBI enquiry into both the cases and bringing the murdurers to justice.
A special appeal was made to both the chief ministers of Tripura Manik Sarkar and Sidharamaiah of Karnataka to expedite the efforts and trace the killers.It may be recalled that not a single killer of Pansare, Kalburgi, Gauri Lankesh and Bhowmick had been caught till yet.
Not only this but cases of several other ast murders of journalists and whistle blowers killed in their line of duties have not been solved and killers arrested till date though about 70 journalists have been killed in a decade and over 150 injured, grievously due to the complacense of the law enforcing authorities.