Ms. Nisha Chettri

Journalist

West Bengal

HRDA has issued an urgent appeal to the National Human Rights Commission of India on September 28 regarding  the brutal assault on Ms. Nisha Chettri, a journalist who was taking photographs of a clash between supporters of the Gurkha Jan Mukti Morcha (GJMM) and police, at Motor Stand in Kalimpong. Ms. Chettri is the local correspondent of The Statesman, a daily newspaper in West Bengal.

On September 15, 2017, Ms. Chettri was covering the clash between supporters of GJMM and the police at the Motor Stand area in Kalimpong. While she was taking photos, tear gas shells were fired at the protesters. While a police van was stopped by a group of GJMM supporters, police tried to create a passage for the vehicle and used force to chase the group. There was total chaos as the demonstrators started running in all directions.

Meanwhile, Ms. Chettri was capturing all these events in her camera. In between, she saw Mr. Amlan Gosh, ASP, running towards her with a baton. She shouted, showing her identity card, stating that she is from the media. However, Mr. Gosh, ignoring her appeals, tried to hit her with the baton but missed her head. He hit her on the back and she fell on the ground, unconscious for a while. With pain, she approached the ASP and demanded reasons as to why she was beaten, without any apparent reason, and without any provocation. As a journalist, she was only covering the incident. According to other journalists of the area, the ASP had earlier too hit two other journalists during the earlier days of protests in the area.