The Congress has claimed a law and order breakdown in Madhya Pradesh after the house of journalist and YouTuber Ravi Kumar Pandey was burnt down in Sidhi district last week.
Pandey told The Hindu that his family was involved in an old dispute with former village head Virendra Singh and his brother Arvind Singh. However, he also alleged that the duo had been threatening him over a report related to gram panchayat’s water tankers about eight months ago. Pandey reports on issues linked to Sidhi district on his YouTube channel Tarang 24 News, which has over 1.5 lakh subscribers.
The incident occurred at Panwar Chouhanan Tola under the Jamodi police station on Friday night. Pandey and his family managed to escape.
Sharing a video of the fire on Facebook, Pandey said he suspected four people and that he had received a threat. “There are four names who set the (house on) fire. One of them had threatened me three days ago. I have a recording of it. My whole family could have been burnt by this fire. But it was not too late in the night, so everyone was awake and ran out of the house to save their lives. Even a journalist’s family is not safe in Sidhi district of Madhya Pradesh. A journalist became homeless today,” he wrote on Facebook.
Sidhi SP Ravindra Verma told The Hindu that an FIR had been filed based on a complaint by Pandey’s uncle and said the complainant had earlier raised suspicions on a family with whom they have an old land dispute.
However, Pandey told The Hindu that he wanted to name them in the FIR and “the police convinced my uncle against it saying that in that case you will not get any compensation”.
“The incident of setting fire to the house of Sidhi journalist Ravi Kumar (Pandey) is highly condemnable. This is a brutal attack on freedom of expression and is proof of the breakdown of law and order in the state. Ravi Kumar should get immediate justice,” former chief minister Kamal Nath posted on X.
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