It was an extremely hot June evening,but Robot Dad a crime reporter by profession was comfortable inside one of his haunting grounds,a small bar in Central Kolkata.After waiting for 15 minutes, his contact, a 40-year old small time trader entered the bar and sat beside him.He is favourite among the crowd and the bartenders.Rohit remembers, three summers ago, around this time, he met the man at the same bar for the first time and became his close buddy. They were chatting for a long time over a glass of vodka .After that, Rohit didn’t see him for several weeks,until he got a text messege from him,suggesting that they meet up at a restaurant after two days.There,he came over to meet Rohit with a chirpy young lady who was a part of a well organised sex racket.Later,loaded with spy-cam, The seasoned crime reporter met her ‘boss’,a middle-aged man in an undisclosed location. But he anxiety grew when he found that her boss was not comfortable with him and became suspicious about his identity and ordered his armed henchmen to search Rohit’s body.But,luckily with the timely intervention from that lady and others present at the room, he survived.
These are the common professional hazards investigative reporters face every day.
Here extracts from an article by Ashish Kira where he described the ordeal he had faced as an undercover reporter when he extensively investigated the involvement of Hindu fundamentalists in Gujrat carnage 2002 for Tehelka.:….At the appointed time,I walked into the high-cellinged reception room of the Vadodara BJP office.Half an hour later, Dhimant Jain walked in, a sort man in his late 30s with a newly acquired punch.He was fixated with Muslims,whom he evidently considered the root of all evil…..Struggling between pursuing files and answering a near-incessant phone calls,he was most hospitable,offering me water,then tea,then showing me the way to the toilet(where I switched on the two spy cams I wearing)….A few minutes later,Dhimant Bhatt’s driver steered the car off the main road and turned into a narrow,deserted,kutcha ( a dirt track made by mud) road. As the car stopped outside a desolate,one-storey house,another car pulled up and two men got out.Bhatt and these men went into the house and told me to wait.I had two spy-cams on me and all it needed to blow my cover was a body frisk.I prepared for the worst……
