Anil Devpurkar of Loksatta Vadodara talked to us about the era before the internet took over people’s lives and people read their newspapers religiously along with their morning cup of tea.
Anil tells us about a story that really made a big impact back then, “I remember this one story I covered back in 1988. I was working for Sandesh. I saw a four-line piece of news which was about an advisasi woman who raped by six policemen in Sagwara’s tribal region. The woman had been finally helped by a Catholic priest from Rajpipla who passed by the woman in distress. The priest had written to the home minister about this incident, requestion justice for the woman. Since the police were the perpetrators of the crime, no one wanted to help the woman or her husband and no action was taken against them.
I knew this story had big potential so I called my photographer, and told him that we are going on a 3-day trip. We set off the next day at 6 am. I hadn’t even told my editor where I was going. I had left in a hurry. My photographer and I set off to Sagwara to talk to the woman. Thankfully we came across a school teacher who was willing to take us to the survivor and her husband. We talked to them and got the gruesome details of the whole incident. After that, I drove back to the office and told my editor that I wanted a whole page for the story. I published the story with the photograph of the survivor. The press association of India forbids even the mention of a rape survivor’s name, but I had published a photo of her because I wanted the story to have an impact and I wanted the perpetrators to face the consequences of their actions. And they did. The story made such an impact that the chief justice of Gujarat used my story to lodge an official complaint against the police. 18 people were sentenced to life imprisonment in relation to this crime.
That was the impact that journalism can have. It can bring criminals to justice. It was the impact of the fourth estate.”
