Shahina K.K., a former reporter for Tehelka magazine, has bagged the 2010 Chameli Devi Jain award for outstanding woman mediaperson.
Shahina was in the news late last year after Karnataka police charged her with intimidating witnesses in the Bangalore blasts case. This followed her report in Tehelka questioning the incarceration of Abdul Nasar Madani in the case.
The charges led to a petition:
“We are gravely concerned about the charges framed by Karnataka police against Shahina K.K., a journalist working for the Tehelka magazine, for interviewing witnesses and publishing a report on the case relating to Abdul Nasar Madani, the chairman of People’s Democratic Party (PDP), who is one of the accused in the Bangalore bomb blasts.
“After the publication of her report, ‘Why is this man still in jail?’ (Dec 4, 2010) Shahina has been facing harassment and intimidation from the Karnataka Police. A case has been registered against her at the Somawarpet Police Station (No. 199/10) and Siddhapura Police Station (No. 241/10) under Section 506 for allegedly intimidating the witnesses.
“We strongly condemn this attitude of the police in framing false charges on this reputed journalist with such high credentials in a nationally reputed magazine. We also feel that Shahina’s case is yet another example of how the State apparatus acts against its marginalized and minority communities and pushes them outside the orbit of legal justice and human rights. Madani’s acquittal without any charges/strictures after 10 long years of incarceration without bail in an earlier case proves that there has been victims of such an ideological bias.
“We also know that by registering a case for criminal intimidation against a journalist, the Karnataka Police has cut at the very root of democratic and media freedoms in our country. We strongly feel that this is not a case against her as an individual but a warning to the entire press community, women and minorities and anyone who questions the logic of a repressive State. Moreover, we are aware that if the police can go to this extent in the case of a reputed journalist, the status of ordinary members of the marginalized and minority communities remains highly threatened.”
18 top Kerala journalists also petitioned the Kerala chief minister against the charges slapped on Shahina. She has since hopped across to Open magazine as its Trivandrum correspondent.
Link via Shobha S.V.
Photograph: courtesy Counter Media
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Previous Chameli Devi award winners
Rupashree Nanda: ‘Journalism: mankind’s greatest achievement’
Nirupama Subramanian: ‘India’s freedom as fragile as its neighbours”
IJR 
Abdul Nazar Madhani is accused of bomb blasts of different types. He is in jail for these. It is upto the court to decide whether he is guilty or not. The only type of investigative journalism Tehelka knows is going after BJP.
This award will not make her innocent. Awards have no meaning or respect.
So just when Shahina KK is being hounded by Hindutva lunatics, she quits Tehelka? One thought she’d be a Tehelka star – look here is Shahina, she’s being hounded by the knickerwallahs for doing investigative journalism and trying to expose the truth, just as our own poor Tarun Jit Tejpal was for Operation West End. (Aniruddha Bahal? Mathew Samuel? Who are they?)
But no press conferences or TV appearances for Shahina KK. Far from being a Tehelka icon, she quits! Wow! You don’t cease to amaze me, Tarun Tejpal and Shoma Choudhary!
Congrats, Shahina
Well Well Well the gaurdians of secularism in india is at it again. Why is abdul nasser in jail? Maybe becoz the RSS BJP refuse to get him out would be the answer from tehelka. Tehelka is one org which is hell bent on being an anti bjp platform nothing else. People like abdul nasser madhani are branded secular by tehelka and co while if the person even if innocent from some other community would be ‘communal’. Well it’s not rss or Simi or such orgs that are dangerous to the secularism of india but PEOPLE LIKE YOU WHO ARE A THREAT BY TAKING SUCH BIASED STAND TO PLEASE A FEW .