On July 11, the employees at Janakpur municipality manhandled Abadhes Kamat, reporter with a local FM Mithila radio, in Janakpur, a city in the southern plain of Nepal.
Talking to Freedom Forum media monitoring desk, reporter Kamat said, while talking about the sanitation and development activities in the municipality, a group of employees at the municipality said to him, 'Why are you being bossy, and writing whatever you like?,' and manhandled.
Reporter Kamat further said he had written a news story about the irregularities and corruption in the municipality a week back and they were venting ire on him referring to the story.
It shows how the journalists are becoming the target while writing news against corruption and malfeasance in the local level.
Freedom Forum condemns the incident, and urges the employees to respect people's right to information, and respect journalists' right to free reporting. Such incidents are quite discouraging to free reporting which does not suit the democratic culture.
For more information,
Freedom Forum
monitoring@freedomforum.org.np
01-4102030/ 4102022