Ujjain: Journalist Jai Koushal was thrashed by a few armed miscreants near his residence in Vidyapati Nagar late on Thursday night. While attacking him with logs, knives, iron rods and other weapons, they also warned him against writing news against an Ujjain Municipal Corporation (UMC) sub-engineer. Later, neighbours rushed him to a hospital.
In a statement to Neelganga police, Koushal said that he was attacked by Shubham Khandelwal, Savan Mishra and their aides at the behest of UMC sub-engineer Rakesh Singh Chouhan alias Raja. He told the police that he had written a few news items against the sub-engineer in a local Hindi daily. He had also exposed Chouhan’s misdeeds on the social media following which Chouhan had threatened to get him eliminated.
Acting on his statement, the police registered an FIR against the accused under sections 341, 294, 506, 323 and 34 of the IPC. A manhunt has been launched to nab the assailants. Following the incident, senior police officials rushed to CHL Medical Centre to inquire about Koushal’s health. Member of Parliament Chintamani Malviya and mayor Meena Jowan were among those who met the scribe in the hospital.
Meanwhile, miffed local scribes demanded that the National Security Act (NSA) be invoked against the accused. A delegation of the City Press Club met IG Rakesh Gupta at his office on Friday afternoon. The journalists alleged that the police was not taking the matter seriously and decided to stage a ‘dharna’ outside the IG office. A few journalists demanded that Section 307 too should be included in the FIR as the attack was fatal and aimed at eliminating Koushal. The scribes later handed over a memorandum to the IG.
On this occasion Shailendra Kulmi, Sandeep Mehta, Ramesh Dass, Anil Tiwari, Narendra Jain, Mahendra Singh Bains, Rahul Katariya, Ashish Saxena, Rajesh Kakdey, Manoj Kushwah, Rajeev Singh Bhadoriya, Kishore Dagdi, Umesh Chouhan, Govind Solanki, Jitendra Dube, Mohan Bairagi, Sanjay Mathur, Ishtiyaq Hussein, Hukumchand Baldiya, Ashish Jain, Dushyant Verma, Jitendra Rathore, Dharmendra Rathore, Rahul Katariya, Aslam Khan, Ashish Saxena, Anand Nigam, Ajay Patwa, Sunil Magariya, Santosh Krishnani, Suresh Chandra Joshi, Pranav Nagar, Sachin Kasliwal, Vijay Vyas, Sudeep Mehta, Dharmendra Siroliya, Dharmendra Jaiswal, Shyam Bharti, Deepak Belani, Vikas Sharma and other journalists were present.