 Hello and welcome to NewsClick. I am Paranjoy Guha Thakurtha in New Delhi. On the 11th of June, journalist Jyotirmoy Day was brutally murdered outside the residential complex he lived in, in Mumbai, in broad daylight. They was one of the finest crime reporters in this country. He was known for his investigative reporting and two weeks after his death there is considerable speculation as to who were responsible for his death. I have with me here Sachin Kalbag. He is the executive editor of Midday Mumbai, the newspaper for which they used to work. Sachin, thank you so much for coming here. You know, when you look at the circumstances under which they was brutally murdered, what was your reaction when you heard that something like this has happened and what were the thoughts that went through your head and why do you think he was targeted? These are the first few questions I want to ask you. Yeah, first of all, I was shocked. I mean, as any editor would be, any colleague of J-Day was, it was completely unbelievable that in a city like Mumbai an investigative reporter of the stature of J-Day would be murdered. My first reaction was, oh my God, with story has he done, that culminated in his murder. And the more I think about this, about what stories he has done, what investigative reporting he has done, the more I think about it and I think that there could be hundreds of people who could be responsible for this. I mean, he had done various stories on the underworld, police corruption, bureaucratic corruption, the mafias. The Mumbai, apart from being the commercial capital of India, is also possibly the mafia capital of India because there are all kinds of mafias. There is a water mafia, there is a sand mafia, there is the oil mafia, there is the adulteration mafia. Tell us a little bit of some of these investigative reports that J-Day did, which perhaps would certainly have antagonized very, very powerful and influential elements within the underworld. That is my point. It is not just the underworld who may have been responsible. There are elements in society in Mumbai, whether they are builders, whether they are people who are engaged in the water trade, whether they are people engaged in the oil trade. They are not necessarily the underworld in the classical sense of the underworld, but these sectors have become so criminalized and the organized crime in these sectors is so rampant that it could be anybody. Recently, he had done several stories on builders, inconsistencies in the legalities of certain buildings. So, clearly there are people that he spoke about openly. There has been a lot of speculation as to whether it could have been a job which was done even by certain rogue elements within the Mumbai police. We keep hearing the names of certain individuals. One police person who is named cropped up in this case was that of his assistant commissioner of police Anil Mahawali, but he himself denies that he has nothing to do with it. What are the possibilities that it could be not just the mafia, but elements, corrupt elements within the police department of Mumbai who were unhappy with the kind of investigative reports that J-Day was putting out in your newspaper. The case of Anil Mahawali is very intriguing. He is intriguing because since 2007, Anil Mahawali was under the scanner of the Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Mumbai Police and there has been a report which was submitted to the Mumbai Police Commissioner as well as to the state government on his links with the underworld. I mean he used to dine and drink and dine with Hasina Parker who is the direct sister of Dawud Ibrahim, the underworld don who is now allegedly in Pakistan. Now when the Anti-Corruption Bureau of the Mumbai Police has indicted a certain officer, it is incumbent on the senior officers to take action against him or at least investigate him further and look into the links. But for four years, nothing of this sort happened and ACP Mahawali continued in the most encodes lucrative zone of South Mumbai. So that created a bit of a problem, especially when our other reporter, Tarakan Diweli was arrested under the official secret side. It is important for you to talk about what happened to Tarakan Diweli also known as a Kela. I understand that he wrote reports even before he joined midday about how various kinds of equipment and ammunition that had been purchased by the law enforcement authorities, by the police and by the railway police and the Bombay police had been literally kept in the open where it would rain and by writing this investigative report he ended up being arrested and that too under the official secrets act. How did this happen? Akela had written a story in 2010 about the RPF Armory where you know expensive equipment was bought for the protection of the railway premises by the RPF and they were rotting in the rain because you know there was a leakage in the roof and where the armory was and Akela had gone along with the photographer to do the story. He wrote that story, the photographer published a story, published a picture of the armory being where the equipment was rotting and surprisingly 9 months or 10 months later he was arrested under the official secrets act. Now the letter the FIR was lodged under section 447 of the Indian Penal Code which talks about unlawful entry but the when Akela went to give the statement to the his statement to the police suddenly and mysteriously this official secrets act was invoked by a senior officer and he was arrested and as you know the official secrets act is so draconian that it's very difficult to get bail in in the lower courts. And imagine if this is happening in the heart of Mumbai what kind of message does the rest of the journalistic fraternity get in different parts of the country. You made a right point I mean the whole idea of intimidating Akela was not to intimidate Akela alone the whole idea was to intimidate the media fraternity in general that if you go if you fall foul of our interests then we'll get after you and this is my fear is that this is the same thing that happened with JD. I mean JD had been an investigative reporter for more than two decades nearly two and a half decades and it could be that you know he's written so many stories against so many people that any of those people would have you know have a grudge against him. You know tell me a little bit more about the you know he was in his mid 50s when he was brutally assassinated I was told he was a tall person six feet four inches but a very very gentle and a very very person who had a lot of warmth towards his colleagues tell us a little bit more about the kind of person they were not only as a human being but also as a professional. I worked very briefly with him in the first in the early 90s when we actually started our careers together I was only 21 and he was in his mid 30s at that time and you know even at that time he was very quiet he was this huge six foot four inch guy and our office was very small and he would intimidate everyone you know with his with his stature and you know but he would his personality was exactly the opposite of his crime writing. I mean he would expose people with the arrogance and the aggression of a heavyweight boxer but in the office while dealing with people while talking to editors or even copy editors on the news desk he would be extremely polite and you know refer to them as sir or madam and he would not do this in jest he would do this very genuinely I mean he would call me I am I was 20 years younger to him and he would call me sir and you know so much he was so quiet about various things that people working with him in his next cubicle for four years and five years would not know you know who his wife was or you know what he was doing during the day in fact several people realized after he died that his wife was a former colleague of ours at midday he was so secretive about even his personal life so you know he would keep quiet he would you know give you know keep to his own counsel unless there was a breaking story and there was a big story in which case you know both of us used to talk at length because there were legal implications involved there were documentary evidence that we needed so but he was very thorough in that I mean he would not come to my office and say I am doing a story but I have no leads I have no sources he would come in the office and say this is the 55 page document that I have got against this guy and let's do this story so I had the courage of going ahead with the story because he gave me the courage that he's got the documentary evidence to back it up if jay day's death is not to be in vain if at the end of the day despite the fact that here was an honest upright investigative journalist who sought to expose corruption in high places who sought to report about the links between the underworld and the police department about important politicians about influential business people builders and so if his death is not to be in vain if there are some important lessons that all of us as journalists that the media fraternity in India and the world has to learn what according to you are those important lessons that we all need to learn I think first we need to the media fraternity in India needs to be closing it and fight this menace together because right now you know with with the economic boom in the country the interest the economic interests of certain sectors has grown so wide and so big that it's you know it's actually difficult for a newspaper like midday a mid-sized newspaper like midday to to fight it alone or in the case of I be and look much we know where when its offices were attacked two years ago or any of the individual journalists and the rural areas or the the so-called be towns are attacked what happens is that you know those cases go unnoticed or if they are noticed then after five or six days because of our short attention spans they're off the pages of our own newspaper or at our television channels so this should not happen that you know if there are attacks on journalists it should be a concerted continuous effort on part of the journalist organization as well as media houses to continue the fight point number two is that crime reporters and investigative journalists should be aware of the dangers that they are they are they they face I'm glad you're mentioning the what you know if journalists indeed have to face certain dangers if there are certain occupational hazards how do they ensure that you know there is at least some sort of a protection well firstly understand the signs I mean in the case of JD I you know he's he did not speak to me about any of the threat calls that he may have got or he did not speak to them about about the calls with his colleagues in the immediate crime department but if if he had received any calls from an interested party a threat call maybe threaten his family threaten him or you know threaten him with you know whatever consequences those signs need to be taken very very seriously now I mean until now journalists had a very nauseous attitude about you know threats especially crime reporters when I think that the more you know threats they get the more important they are that is not the case anymore JD's case should be a wake up call not only to the authorities but also to the media fraternity that there is a clear and present danger on on our lives especially if we do in so-called inconvenient stories and the the more we continue you know this solidarity the more we are aware of the dangers and we are aware of those dangers in time quickly then we can approach the correct or the right authorities in in the case of JD if he was doing a story an investigative story that I knew would have resulted in his death I have told him don't do that story because for me you are more or take a number of precautions you know because for me your life is more important because you know there are than a story because you know there are 100 other stories to be done thank you very much Sachin for talking to you thank you