We are delighted to announce that The Quint‘s Athar Rather and Vishnukant Tiwari (formerly working at The Quint) have won the prestigious Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism 2023, under the category ‘Uncovering India Invisible’.
Take a look at their award-winning story.
In a three-part docuseries, The ‘Witches’ of Jharkhand, Vishukant Tiwari and Athar Rather set out to uncover why women continued to be labelled as ‘witches’ and be harassed, tortured, and even murdered in Jharkhand.
In the first part, they looked at the 2015 case of how, in the dead of the night, a drunken mob of villagers dragged at least five women from their homes in Kanjiya Maraitoli village in Jharkhand’s Ranchi district, suspecting them to be ‘witches’. The five victims were tortured, stripped naked, and beaten to death. On the face of it, it would appear that such allegations are still thrown about because people are superstitious. But a lot lies underneath the surface.
In August 1995, Chhutni Mahato was convinced that her in-laws and the villagers of Madkamdih village in Jharkhand’s Saraikela Kharsawan district would kill her if she didn’t run away. Her fears weren’t unfounded. After all, she had been branded a ‘witch’ by the village panchayat itself. On the intervening night of 4-5 August 1995, Chhutni took her two young children and managed to escape. Today, this witchcraft survivor has turned into a saviour for women who face similar accusations, even as she blames the government for not doing enough to end this superstitious practice. In the second part of the series, the journalists revisited Chhutni’s story, almost three decades later.
In June 2022, Holo Devi was branded a ‘witch’ and killed by the family members of her husband’s first wife in Ganeshpur village of Jharkhand’s Lohardaga district. The reason? Property dispute. A tribal woman in her late fifties, Holo Devi was brutally thrashed, forced to drink pesticide, and ultimately pushed off a cliff, leading to her death. In the third part of the series, the journalists revisited her story through the accounts of her son and daughter-in-law.
The ceremony for the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in Journalism 2023 was held in Delhi on Wednesday, 19 March.
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