Sumit Galhotra/CPJ Asia Program Senior Research Associate

Sumit Galhotra is the research associate for CPJ's Asia program. He served as CPJ's inaugural Steiger Fellow and has worked for CNN International, Amnesty International USA, and Human Rights Watch. He has reported from London, India, and Israel and the Occupied Territories, and specializes in human rights and South Asia.

Closure of news outlets signals further erosion of media freedom in the Maldives

News outlets in the Maldives are closing down, one after another. The story at each publication is different, sometimes complicated, but the outcome is the same: journalists are facing a tougher time doing their jobs.

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Bangladesh should take urgent steps to protect freedom of expression

The U.N. Human Rights Council will convene in Geneva for its next session today. Ahead of this meeting, international groups working on press freedom and freedom of expression, including the Committee to Protect Journalists, made a joint submission to the council calling for urgent and concrete steps to reverse the deteriorating climate for free expression…

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Forensics experts investigate the site of the Lahore suicide bombing. The Pakistani Taliban claimed responsibility and warned the media could be next. (AFP/Arif Ali)

In Pakistan, continued risk of violence means press takes every threat seriously

“Everyone will get their turn in this war, especially the slave Pakistani media,” warned Ehsanullah Ehsan, spokesman for the Pakistani Taliban on Twitter this week. “We are just waiting for the appropriate time.”

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Slideshow: Remembering Avijit Roy, one year after blogger’s murder in Dhaka

On the day Avijit Roy was murdered in Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka, I had only just left the country. When I arrived in India later that day a Bangladeshi journalist broke the news to me that Roy had been hacked to death and his wife Rafida Ahmed Bonya, also a blogger, had been critically injured.

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Bangladeshis read a newspaper pasted to a wall in Dhaka. The editor of The Daily Star, based in the city, is facing multiple legal cases after saying he published unsubstantiated reports several years ago. (AP/A.M. Ahad)

79 cases and counting: Legal challenges pile up for Daily Star editor who admitted error in judgment

When Mahfuz Anam, editor of one of Bangladesh’s most respected newspapers, admitted recently to a lapse in editorial judgment several years ago, he could not have predicted the legal backlash that would ensue. Anam’s admission that he published unsubstantiated information accusing Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina of corruption has led to a barrage of defamation and…

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Lawyers scuffle outside a Delhi court on Wednesday. Several journalists say they were beaten by lawyers at the court in the past week. (AP/Tsering Topgyal)

Court reporters beaten by lawyers in latest attack on press freedom in India

Attacks this week against journalists covering a high-profile sedition case have heightened concerns about the state of press freedom in India. CPJ has reported frequently on journalists there coming under attack from police, criminals, politicians, and others. Now lawyers have to be added to the list.

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Rahul says he heard police give the order to charge before rushing at students at the Delhi protest. (Rahul M.)

‘I kept telling them I’m a journalist but they kept beating me’: Photographer beaten at Delhi protest

As police cracked down on protesters in Delhi during recent protests over the treatment of Dalits, who occupy the lowest rungs of India’s caste ladder, journalists were caught in the fray. The protests were sparked by the suicide of Rohith Vemula, a student who had been barred from halls of residence and parts of campus,…

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