Prashant Jha of Hindustan Times on Monday stepped down as the political editor and bureau chief of the national newspaper after a former colleague accused him of sexual misconduct. Jha will, however, continue to work as a reporter but will have no managerial responsibilities.
Jha, in his letter to his editor, wrote, “There have been specific allegations against me – and my personal conduct – recently, which have raised moral questions about my conduct. In this backdrop, I believe it would be best for me to step down…”
The prominent political journalist, who is also an author of two books, “How The BJP Wins’ and ‘Battles of The New Republic: A Contemporary History of Nepal’ was accused by a former employee of the same organisation.
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Taking to Twitter as part of the #MeToo movement the former employee of HT shared screenshots of the Whatsapp conversations between them, which took place on April 2017. She, however, couldn’t file a complaint with the Internal Complaints Committee (ICC) as she had left the organisation when the conversations took place.
Meanwhile, Times of India Resident Editor KR Sreenivas has also been accused of sexual harassment by seven female journalists. They claimed that the accused will often send them lewd text messages making sexual gestures, mentally torture them and will also touch them inappropriately.
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While these allegations have rocked the media industry, in another incident several journalists – most of whom are prominent for writing anti-government content – have found themselves blocked from using Facebook.
According to a report in The Telegraph, journalists, who have been affected include Rifat Jawaid of Janata Ka Reporter, Prema Negi and Ajay Prakash of Janjwar and several employees of Caravan Daily and Bolta Hindustan.
One of the first journalist to have his account locked out, Rifat Jawaid told the national daily, “Our Facebook page was blocked for a while last year after we broke the Rafale scam, and it was restored after we protested on social media. I don’t post anything inflammatory. On September 27, minutes after I posted something on the Ayodhya verdict, my account was disabled. It was restored in a day after I wrote to the nodal officer… They did not remove the Ayodhya post.”
The daily also reported that it had contacted Facebook India’s communications director Amrit Ahuja on Friday. Ahuja sought 48 hours to respond but nothing has been informed as yet.