https://www.reporters-collective.in/special/what-killed-mukesh-chandrakar
Mukesh Chandrakar was a journalist from Bastar, Chhattisgarh. Mukesh was killed for reporting on a substandard road.
Starting 2021, the Union government amended the laws to permit private miners to get into iron ore mining. Private miners were brimming with hope for iron, from the Bailadila hill range. Till date, only government-owned companies had controlled the mining in the region. Now an aggressive push for openin new mines to private players would run in parallel with the push for developing the roads to take the ore out of the potential new mines. While several villages protested about the mines being opened up without consent on their traditional lands...
Many villagers said the lack of formal documentation of their land rights comes in the way of them seeking
a fair deal. .. On paper and in government records, the roads and the camps continue to be constructed and operated for the benefit of villagers such as Kadti.
In Bastar’s reality, it is the contractors who make a killing from constructing the roads, the miners who need them most to truck out the mineral wealth and journalists such as Mukesh who pay the price with their lives and livelihoods for telling us the stories of these roads of development.