Pratapgarh (Uttar Pradesh): A TV journalist based in Uttar Pradesh has been found dead under mysterious circumstances in Pratapgarh district. Just a day before his death, Sulabh Srivastava, who worked for ‘ABP News’ and ‘ABP Ganga’, had written Saturday to the Uttar Pradesh Police. He said he felt threatened following his recent reportage of liquor mafias in the district. Seeking protection, Sulabh Srivastava had said he had been informed by sources that the liquor mafia was angry with him. He said they, after the publication of his report, wanted to harm him or his family.
Pratapgarh police has said that the journalist died in a ‘motorcycle accident’. “Srivastava was returning on his motorcycle after media coverage, at around 11.00pm Sunday. He fell from his motorcycle near a brick kiln. Some labourers lifted him from the road and then used his phone to call his friends,” the police said in a statement. “He was taken to the district hospital where the doctors declared him dead,” the police added.
The police also stated that the initial probe revealed that Srivastava fell after his ‘bike collided with a handpump along the road’. However, they informed that they are probing other angles in the matter.
Congress leader Priyanka Gandhi Vadra hit out at Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath’s government. She said that ‘the liquor mafia has killed from Aligarh to Pratapgarh but the UP government is silent (sic)’.
“Does the UP government, which nurtures ‘jungle raj’, have any answer to the tears of the family members of journalist Sulabh Srivastava?” Priyanka asked in another tweet.
