Ggn scribe commits suicide alleging police harassment
3 May 2016 11:50 PM GMT
According to the police, the deceased identified as Pooja Tiwari had sought help from fellow journalists and the district administration who didn’t believe in the credibility of her stories. Sources revealed that the deceased had conducted a sting operation on doctors who were committing crimes like female foeticide. However, soon after the sting, the doctors made a counter- allegation that the reporter had sought a Rs 2 lakh bribe. The local police then reportedly began harassing her over the bribe allegations.
Sources also revealed that Pooja was about to get married to a man whom she had known for over a year. But her marriage fell apart after the boy’s family came to know about the allegation against her.
“According to emails exchanged within Faridabad’s journalistic fraternity, it was crystal clear that fellow journalists, police officials and the accused doctors were behind Pooja’s suicide”, said a fellow journalist, who didn’t wish to be named.
The deceased was a reporter for I am in DNA from Faridabad and had joined Zee Convergence Ltd in December 2015. Recently, after receiving a tip-off from her sources, she had done a sting on a Dr Dhawal Singh who was allegedly assisting in female foeticide. Her story revealed that the doctor used and sold MTP (Medical Termination of Pregnancy) kits. The sting was conducted in the first week of March in Dayal Nagar, Green Field Colony where the deceased had gone as a decoy.
Her suicide note read: “Just because I’m a girl and was successful at doing investigative stories and I used to take help from a male co-reporter, about which I had informed my organisation, I’m not liable to character assassination.”
In one of her emails to a journalist in Faridabad, she had written that another co-reporter had also gone undercover, pretending to be her husband, who wanted to get a MTP done on his wife (the deceased). After a couple of meetings, Tiwari had gained the doctor’s trust, following which the doctor promised that he would get his best gynecologist to perform the MTP. Dr Acharna Goyal, a known gynecologist never knew that she was a part of this illegal activity, until the reporter herself informed her about the sting and told her that she was a journalist.
“At every step, her bosses were kept in loop and they only had asked her to take Dr Archana’s version in her story,” Tiwari’s email further read.
However, things started getting ugly for Tiwari after the story was published. In her email, Tiwari has alleged that after the story was published, the doctors approached the local police saying that it was because they refused to give her Rs 2 lakh as extortion money that the story was released.
However, on April 8, the Faridabad police booked Tiwari and her co-reporter under the charges of extortion. But when the police did not find any proof against her and the co-reporter, the FIR was cancelled. Rajender Singh, SHO Surajkund Police Station said, “We have recorded a statement from her roommate and her parents who have come from Indore. We will be investigating the matter and take further action.”
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