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Journalists Prabhjit Singh and Arshu John received the Asian College of Journalism’s (ACJ) Award for Investigative Journalism, while journalist Sukanya Shantha won the K. P. Narayana Kumar Memorial Award for Social Impact Journalism at the school’s annual award ceremony on June 3, 2021.
The former’s winning entry, ‘Crime and Prejudice,’ investigated the communal riots that broke out in Delhi last year and was published in The Caravan Magazine in September 2020. In praise of the article, Jury Chairperson Andrew Whitehead said, “The article draws a dismal picture of vicious communal riots conducted in plain sight and of vigilante groups acting with impunity, and chronicles the apparent culpability of some local politicians, the profound shortcomings in the police response and the seemingly vindictive pursuit by the authorities of what appear to be false criminal cases.”
Similarly, Shantha’s article ‘From Segregation to Labour, Manu’s Caste Law Governs the Indian Prison System’ looked into ongoing caste discrimination in jails across the country. The article was published on The Wire website.
“The winning entry succeeds emphatically in giving voice to the voiceless and in shining a light on under reported issues. Shantha, writing for The Wire, focuses on one of the most hidden of social issues – what happens behind bars in India’s prisons. It reveals the persistence of caste-based segregation, discrimination and division of labour within the prison system in states which have chosen not to adopt the ‘model’ prison manual. The official connivance in this persistence of caste-based inequality is shocking. The seeming reluctance of prisoner welfare organisations to address the issue is almost equally disturbing,” said Jury member Anuradha Raghunathan.
Along with the three winners, the jury applauded many others for the investigative reports submitted this year. Journalists Disha Shetty, Tish Sanghera and Pankhuri Kumar published their article ‘Environment Undone Series’ in India Spend. Lakshmi Subramanian published ‘Inside Syria – the Naked and the Dead’ article in The Week. People’s Archive of Rural India Editor Shalini Singh worked on the Women’s Health Series.
For the social impact journalism category, the jury praised special mentions: Divya Gupta for her The Caravan article ‘Shooting Up – Himachal Pradesh’s spiralling heroin problem’; Aparna Ganesan, Vigneshwar K, Vivek Manoharan and Prajeesh K. for their Asiaville Tamil documentary film on ‘Ennore: Living in Ashes’; Tanmoy Bhaduri’s Gaon Connection article on ‘Buzz of hope: After numerous tiger encounters, traditional honey gatherers of the Sundarbans get a new lease of life’; Sruthin Lal and Dibyaudh Das’s Asiaville interactive feature on Corona Cyclops.
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