A businessman assaulted and issued threat to the reporters Anish Tiwari, Aashish Tiwari and Ram Chandra Basnet while reporting news on December 11 in Sindhupalchowk. Sindhupalchowk district lies in the Bagmati Province of Nepal.
As per information received at Freedom Forum, the reporters had called a private construction company's proprieter Pratap Lama on his phone seeking information on progress of the ongoing road construction in Balefi Rural Municipality.
But, instead of providing the information proprieter Lama verbally abused reporters and threatened them for reporting news.
Anish Tiwari is Sindhupalchowk based reporter to Kantipur daily, Aashish Tiwari is program manager at Megha Television and Basnet is reporter to Sarokar Television.
Freedom Forum is concerned over the incident as it has violated the notion of right to free press and right to information. Journalists have every right to report on the issues of public concern, and make people informed through their reporting. Hence, FF strongly urges the concerned to apologize for assaulting journalists and respect their rights.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np