Shortly after the editor of daily Hamro Prajashakti moved the High Court against the Sikkim Democratic Front (SDF) government, the newspaper office was attacked by masked men who injured seven journalists, including editor Anjan Upadhya, says a Press Trust of India (PTI) report.
The journalists of various newspapers and agency who gathered at the office at Ranipool, about 10 km from here, sufferred fractures when it was attacked, allegedly by SDF activists with hammer and rods.
The injured scribes were Anjan Upadhyaya, Shekhar Khabash, D B Rai, Pabitra Bhandari, Bijoy Gurung (of UNI) Thakur Subedi Sharma and Raj Kumar, an office attendant. The injured who were rushed to a government hospital here. They sustained multiple injuries but were out of danger, hospital sources said.
Upadhaya, also a member of the CPI(M), alleged that the attack was the handiwork of the ruling dispensation as the SDF was not happy with him as his paper criticised the policies of the Pawan Kumar Chamling government.
Earlier in the day, Upadhya filed a petition in the High Court alleging pressure tactics of the government to prevent the media from criticising its functioning.
This is the second time Hamro Prajashakti office was attacked in three months. In May, the office was ransacked and set on fire and its circulation was also prevented by SDF, the editor alleged. The government also stopped giving advertisements to the paper against which he had moved the Press Council of India.
