Five journalists, including two women, were manhandled and attacked by a group of drug addicts near a chawl in Santacruz (E) on Thursday, where they had gone to report on the deaths of four people in a fire caused by a cylinder leak. A report in this paper stated that Manashri Pathak and her cameraperson Narayan Parmar, who work with a Marathi news channel were returning from a chawl in Golibar Nagar, where the fire took place, when a drug addict hurled a stone at Pathak. When confronted by the scribes, other drug addicts joined in and attacked them. Other journalists who tried to intervene were also slapped and beaten up.

This shocking incident which took place in broad daylight, at 12 pm specifically highlights the increasing dangers journalists face while doing their job. In this case, the journalists were not in any potentially ‘dangerous’ place. They were not even covering any potentially ‘sensitive’ story, not that those factors excuse any kind of attacks on newspersons.