Bastar journalist murder: Police blames cousins for brutal death

Chhattisgarh Police on Monday claimed that murdered Bastar journalist Mukesh Chandrakar had done a video report on the poor condition of a new road in Bijapur aired on NDTV on 25 December. The contractor who constructed the road was Mukesh’s cousin Suresh Chandrakar, the police said. Angered by the report, Suresh’s brother Ritesh and his accomplices allegedly killed Mukesh, the police added.

Suresh Chandrakar, who was arrested from Hyderabad and is being brought back to Chhattisgarh, was the alleged mastermind behind the murder. The body of the slain journalist was even reportedly found from a septic tank on premises owned by the contractor.

As details of the murder spread like wildfire after the body was recovered on 4 January, Saturday, three days after Mukesh was reported missing, shock and horror swept through the state. As many as 15 injuries were detected on his head during the post-mortem, five ribs were broken, and so was his neck, even as his liver was found to have splintered in four parts. Doctors conducting the examination are reported to have said that the deceased would have been assaulted by more than two assailants.

India's journalist community from Delhi to Bastar could barely conceal their shock and grief. Hindustan Times deputy national editor Dipankar Ghose recalled that Mukesh loved journalism with a passion. “When he was with you, nothing was impossible… he was rooted in Bastar, but not limited by it.”

When he worked for newspapers and TV channels based in Raipur from Bastar, he would be paid a few hundred rupees, or at best a thousand, for each report, depending on the gravity of the news. But he realised, Ghose wrote in a post on X, that media organisations would never truly value his ground reports from the region.

He therefore started Bastar Junction, a YouTube channel that at last count had garnered 162,000 followers. The money he made from the channel was unstable but he managed to make Rs 20,000 a month on an average, and occasionally more, his friends recalled.

Mukesh lost his father when he was rather young, and the family was displaced because of Naxalite violence and state reprisal, forced to live in one refugee camp after another. His mother sent him off to a school in Dantewada to spare him the nomadic life, and he was forced to sell liquor and work as a motorcycle mechanic to make ends meet after he lost his mother to cancer.

“Maoists threatened his life several times; the state threatened him when he exposed excesses. He was often bullied by his own Bijapur fraternity for helping 'national journalists' but he never, ever wavered. It was him, and my other dear friend Ganesh Mishra, who risked their lives and went deep into the forests to rescue a CRPF jawan abducted by Maoists in 2021,” recalls Ghose.

Ranjan Das, a journalist from Dantewada and a close friend of Mukesh, told the Indian Express how in 2016, Mukesh took him in. “He lived in a mud house, paying Rs 2,200 as rent; but he allowed me to live with him for five years as we were both facing financial issues…he was extremely sensitive to Adivasi issues…his coverage of protests by villagers, fake encounters, civilian killings, poor infrastructure, malnutrition, and poor health facilities, made him popular among Adivasis,” Das was quoted as saying.

The murder has also served to expose the rags-to-riches story of petty contractors and their nexus with politicians and officials — without whose active complicity they cannot make exorbitant profits by cutting corners. Suresh Chandrakar, too, enjoyed a meteoric rise, and when he got married in 2022, he is reported to have flown in a helicopter for the wedding.