No Politicians Killed These Stories, The Press Did! Happy World Press Freedom Day
Today, on World Press Freedom Day, as hashtags trend and newsroom panels wax lyrical about the nobility of the fourth estate, allow me to break the rhythm. Let me tell you about a place where the press gasps for breath — not because it is gagged, but because it has forgotten how to shout. That place is Barak Valley’s Cachar.
In this valley of rivers and remembrance, stories do not die of censorship. They die of neglect. Worse, they die of selective silence.
Take Sonai, for instance. A constituency with an elected MLA from the AIUDF — Karimuddin Barbhuiya — who defeated a BJP heavyweight, Aminul Haque Laskar – who has now moved to Congress, in the 2021 elections. This year, as Panchayat elections rolled around, all eyes turned to Sonai’s four Zila Parishad seats. Yet, in a baffling act of political retreat, AIUDF fielded no candidates in any of them. According to senior AIUDF sources, Barbhuiya was entrusted with the responsibility to lead the charge, and instead, he chose inaction.
What prompted this silence? Why would a principal opposition MLA go missing in an election to the Panchayat? Is this not soft surrender — political theatre masking as strategy? And yet, no one in the media asks. No one in the opposition answers.
But that’s just one layer of the rot.
Let’s ask: Where are Sourav and Supriya?
Two young lives, one grieving family, and a community that once poured into the streets demanding justice. 12-year-old Sourav Das and 5-year-old Supriya Das are residents of Tapoban Road in Silchar’s Ashram Road, and they have been missing since June 9, 2019. Their disappearance was not just tragic — it was suspicious, mysterious, and soaked in unanswered questions. There were allegations, eyewitness accounts, and public outrage. But over time, the noise dimmed. The police issued statements, the system played its waiting game, and slowly, the case began to fade. Today, no one is talking about them — not the administration, not the political class, not even most of the media. Is that how truth disappears?
Neha Bagti’s case offers an eerily similar pattern. She was the househelp at a Professor couple’s quarters in a Central University. Their daughter, along with househelp Neha Bagt, went missing in June 2017. Then Chief Minister of Assam, Sarbananda Sonowal, intervened, posted on social media and the professor couple’s daughter was rescued. It was alleged that Neha Bagti helped the kidnappers by guiding the kid to a car, but what happened to her? The woman, sole breadwinner of her house, vanished under circumstances that begged for headlines and investigations. Her family cried out for help, clinging to hope. The story made it to print, yes — but not to priority. Republic Days and Independence Days came and went, and Neha’s name was barely whispered in the corridors of power. If justice delayed is justice denied, what is justice forgotten?
The Valley has become a graveyard of such forgotten names.
Kajol Dutta – employed in Barak Valley’s one of the most senior politicians and current MP of Silchar, Parimal Suklabaidya, is missing since 2016. During the 2021 election campaign, her mother stood on a stage at the insistence of then All India Mahila Congress President Sushmita Dev and star campaigner, Tejaswi Yadav, who invoked his name to jolt the electorate. Emotions ran high. Flashbulbs popped. But what happened after the votes were counted? Did anyone return to ask: Where does the investigation stand? Did the case go to trial? Why is there no movement on Dutta’s file?
When tragedy becomes a tool for campaigning but not a cause for justice, democracy becomes performance.
And then there is Malin Sarma, a fellow journalist, killed in a hit-and-run in Tarapur — the very heart of Silchar. Run over midnight of July 28, 2019, outside the Fire and Emergency Services Station, near Tarapur police outpost, and metres away from the residence of a sitting BJP MLA. A journalist dies in the most surveilled part of town — and the killer truck disappears. If that doesn’t chill your spine, nothing will. Why was no CCTV footage released? How do you hit and run in the nerve centre of a city and simply vanish?
If a journalist can be killed so easily, and forgotten so quickly — what hope do others have?
But the worst since May 19, 1961, in the history of Barak Valley is, without a doubt, July 26, 2021 — the day six Assam Police officers were ambushed and killed by the Mizoram Armed Police on the Assam–Mizoram border. Over 40 others, including the then Superintendent of Police, Cachar, were injured in the brutal gunfire. That blood-stained strip of land, as per official maps, lies well within Assam’s constitutional boundary.
And yet, today, it is guarded by Mizoram forces. Worse still, government infrastructure projects are being executed there. Houses are being built, roads are being laid — on land soaked in the blood of Assam’s own men in uniform.
If the land was always to be conceded, why were six police personnel sent to defend it in the first place? What briefing were they given? Who ordered the occupation to be resisted — and who quietly allowed it to be lost?
Why is this not front-page news every month?
Remember — Mizoram, Assam, and Delhi were governed by the same political alliance when the incident happened. And yet, no answers have emerged. No responsibility fixed. No apology issued.
It is this pattern — of death without consequence, betrayal without outrage, and injustice without memory — that defines the Valley today.
“A nation is run by its Parliament, protected by its Army and preserved by its press,” Atal Bihari Vajpayee once said.
When the press begins to falter — through fear, fatigue, or favour — the very scaffolding of democracy begins to collapse.
World Press Freedom Day is not a day for newsroom selfies and glossy awards. It is a day of reckoning. A day to ask: Are we, the press, still the watchdog — or have we become the doormat?
In Barak Valley, the truth doesn’t just lie buried — it is being bulldozed.
The stories of Sourav, Supriya, Neha, Kajol, Malin, and the slain police officers are not isolated incidents. They are markers of a deeper decay — a culture of apathy, a system of silence, and a press that too often chooses comfort over confrontation.
But let it be known — not all of us are asleep.
Some of us still write. Still question. Still provoke.
Because when the people are denied answers, the press must become the courtroom.
And when the establishment looks away, journalism must stare harder.
This World Press Freedom Day, remember:
The real threat isn’t censorship.
It’s complicity.
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