The assassination of senior crime journalist J Dey once again raises the question of the safety of media persons, especially those involved in investigative journalism.
The assassination of senior crime journalist J Dey once again raises the question of the safety of media persons, especially those involved in investigative journalism.
While the assassination, which has sent shock waves amongst the journalistic community, has to be condemned, it would not be too far-fetched to state that this was bound to happen. 
Dey gave crime reporting a new definition by going beyond the police handouts and police press briefings
Journalists involved in investigative journalism or those who have been exposing the wrongs in the society, especially the wrongdoings of political bigwigs, the law enforcing and security agencies and the underworld are always exposed to threats to their lives.
The Committee to Protect journalists has recorded the killing of 864 journalists all over the world since 1992.
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These also include those killed during the call of duty like covering war and riots. It is presumed that the others were killed to silence them.
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The CPJ statistics show that 39 per cent of these journalists covered the political beat, 21 per cent covered business and 14 per cent were on the crime beat.
In countries where the hardened criminals and the mafia are in league with the political forces or with the law enforcing agencies, they do not fear the exposes by the media, due to their confidence that they cannot be brought to justice.
On the other hand, the white collar criminals, those in politics, bureaucrats and police officials have a reputation to protect, even when they are involved in corrupt or criminal activities and these forces are a bigger threat to the media, than those who have made crime their full time profession. The same seems to be the case with Dey.
Dey gave crime reporting a new definition by going beyond the police handouts and police press briefings.
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Journalists often make the mistake of overlooking the criminal acts of their sources, in order to ensure that they get their "stories". Dey did not ever give that impression.
He took on the underworld and the law enforcing agencies with the same force and had thus invited trouble for himself.
Having exposed the mafia as well as the police-underworld nexus, any lay person would have known that there was a threat to Dey's life.
There is talk of Dey having received threatening calls in the recent past.
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Even if that was true, it was unlike Dey to seek police protection for two reasons: had he sought police protection, it would have given his journalism a great setback as his sources would not have been able to contact him; but the most important thing is that Dey was not the kind who would be scared for his life.
There was no way anybody could silence him, by threats or by buying him out. The only way to do that was to eliminate him and that is what somebody got done.
To a great extent, the police force in the country has been reduced to a crime investigation force; its main task should be crime prevention.
The Mumbai police should have followed Dey's work closely, anticipated such a threat to his life and taken preventive action to protect him, without interfering with his work.
The involvement of some members of the police force in the killing of Dey cannot be ruled out. In the light of this it is essential that the investigation is handed over to a neutral agency like the CBI.
Also, the CBI needs to probe into the mafia-police nexus that Dey had been exposing. Only then would justice be done.
Senior journalist Abhay Mokashi was J Dey's first reporting head in MiD DAY in 1995
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