On May 28, Kodagu district correspondent for The New Indian Express in Karnataka was "manhandled" by Madikeri local police for attempting to report on long queues outside Army Canteen during the lockdown-like restrictions.
The journalist soon after took to the microblogging site to bring the incident to the notice of DGP Karnataka and wrote, "@DgpKarnataka Sir, I was pushed and manhandled by the #Madikeri SI for covering a news story. When I complained with a lady cop present at the site, she said that Cops are stressed and frustrated due to overwork. Does that mean they can attack a journalist? The cop threw my phone."
Another local channel Asianet Suvarna News reported today a similar incident of lack of social distancing, mismanagement, and long queues outside the Army canteen in Madikeri, Kodagu. The Kannada video posted by Prajna G R, TNIE reporter shows the cops charging at the journo for entering the premises and shooting without appropriate ID cards.
At a time when commoners feel unsafe stepping out of their homes even to fulfill their basic needs, WhatsApp memes of police sanitizing their shiny batons are forwarded to deter people from venturing out, an attack on news reporters doing their job feels condemnable.
Another scribe K Shiva Kumar who works as a senior associate editor responding to the incident, wrote: "Cops should know that journalists are frontline workers and not (taking) a trip in Madikeri. @BSBommai should act and see that it should not repeat. We condemn such incidents..."
In the recent past, Prajna has brought to light many pandemic-related news stories from Kodagu district, the most famous being the story of a girl appealing to find her mother's (a covid-19 victim) phone stolen from Karnataka hospital citing 'it holds a lot of memories.
