Vetern scribe Prem Shankar Jha, now 83, and deceased photojournalist Danish Siddiqui, who died on duty while reporting in Afghanistan in July 2021, will be honoured RedInk Awards by the Mumbai Press Club on Wednesday. Jha will receive the lifetime achievement award, while Siddiqui has been named ‘Journalist of the Year’ in a posthumous honour.
Chief Justice of India N V Ramana will virtually present the RedInk Awards for Excellence in Indian Journalism on Wednesday evening.
Instituted by the Mumbai Press Club a decade ago, this is the 10th edition of “peer recognition for excellent writing and good journalism”.
Senior journalist and author Jha, who has held leadership editorial positions in several mainline dailies and periodicals like The Financial Express, The Hindustan Times and The Times of India, has had a long and distinguished career marked by his incisive and analytical writing. He is the author of over a dozen books on Kashmir and China.
Siddiqui was the Chief Photographer for Reuters in India, who was unfortunately killed on July 15 while on duty in Afghanistan. He has been posthumously awarded the Journalist of the Year-2020 honour for his “spectrum of the investigative and impactful body of news photography ranging from the Rohingyas and anti-CAA protests to Covid-19 and the Afghanistan Civil War”, a statement from the Mumbai Press Club read.
Siddiqui had received the Pulitzer Prize in 2018 for Feature Photography for his work documenting the Rohingya refugee crisis. He was killed as he was caught in crossfire between the Taliban and the Afghan special forces in Spin Boldak near the border with Pakistan. The incident happened before the Taliban took over the country in August 2021.
The virtual awards ceremony will honour awards across 12 categories in journalism.
