But the case of the Editor of Urdu daily, Pindaar, is worth mentioning. The Fact Finding Team has highlighted the plight of the Urdu journalists, who are under intense pressure from the state government as well as the management to publish stories to the liking of powers that be. 

For example, Rehan Ghani, who appeared before the Fact Finding Team said that “he was made the victim of such an undeclared pressure of the state government on the media exerted through the owners and the managers of the media houses. He narrated that in his capacity as Chief Editor of Urdu Daily, Pindaar, he was running a regular column “Do Tuk” since 2004 but in May 2007 as, according to him, one of his Do Tuk pieces hurt the state chief minister, Nitish Kumar. 

“In response to this ‘journalistic misdemeanor’ he was called by the Proprietor of his paper to say that the state government was quite unhappy with his column and the State Minority Commission Chairman, Naushad Ahmad, has communicated this displeasure of the state government over phone asking him to “set” i.e. to get rid of the person who had written this piece. As a result of it, the paper’s proprietor first dropped his column then demoted him to the post of Managing Editor and ultimately his name was removed from the Print line.” 

The exit of Rehan Ghani is not the lone story of mediapersons being removed, transferred or even demoted.

The report of the Fact-Finding Team further said: “The reporters and outstation correspondents too are required to arrange/manage advertisements from the IPRD as well as the private parties. The supposedly senior journalists are assigned these jobs more. In this regard many a journalists referred to the transfer of a senior ranking journalist of an esteemed National Hindi daily published from Bihar for his falling out of the grace of powers that be for publishing a news-item related to some alleged scam in a state government department quoting the then departmental minister.”