JFA mourns Dhaneswar Rabha’s demise in Covid-19 pandemic
Guwahati: Journalists’ Forum Assam (JFA) mourned untimely demise of Udalguri based scribe Dhaneswar Rabha, who succumbed to novel corona virus infection today (6 September 2020) in Guwahati medical college hospital. The forum declared that Rabha (35) becomes the first journo-victim to Covid-19 pandemic in northeast India.
Resident of Kacharaital village in Kalaigaon locality of Udalguri district, Rabha was diagnosed with chronic kidney disease and put on regular dialysis for some time. Lately tested positive for Covid-19, the soft-spoken journalist was hospitalized recently. Rabha left behind his parents, wife, two kids, a host of relatives and well-wishers.
As the casualties among the country’s media fraternity because of Covid-19 complications start increasing day by day, the JFA urged every scribe to be cautious while reporting from the ground. The forum expressed anguish that even though hundreds of scribes across the State got infected, the worrisome development is not reported properly by the concerned media outlets.
However, few infected media persons made personal revelations in the social media. JFA president Rupam Barua and secretary Nava Thakuria appreciated all media persons for relentlessly playing the role of corona warriors along with the practicing doctors, nurses, sanitation workers and police personnel in the pandemic.
Lately, the corona casualties among the media fraternity across the country started kicking as every third day it is losing a media person to Covid-19 complications. Days back, Mumbai based senior film-journalist Shyam Sarma, Nellore (Andhra Pradesh) based scribe Narayanam Seshacharyulu, Pune based television reporter Pandurang Raikar succumbed to the infections.
The list also includes television journalist Neelanshu Shukla from Kanpur, photojournalist Jai Deep from Patiala, television reporter Madhusudan Reddy & video journalist M Parthasarathy from Tirupati, television reporter Ramanathan & news videographer E Velmurugan from Chennai, news presenter Davinder Pal Singh from Chandigarh, television scribe Manoj Kumar from Hyderabad, print-journalist Pankaj Kulashrestha from Agra, Orissa’s journalists Simanchal Panda, K Ch Ratnam & Priyadarshi Patnaik, etc.
Kolkata based photojournalist Ronny Roy became the first India scribe to lose his battle against the dreaded virus. New Delhi scribe Tarun Sisodia killed himself undergoing Covid-19 treatment at AIIMS. Maharashtra’s veteran journalist Ashok Churi, who edited Marathi weekly PalgharTimes, died at a Palghar based hospital, who later tested positive for Covid-19. The printer-publisher of AsomiyaKhabar (Rantu Das) also died at a Guwahati hospital and later tested positive for the virus infection.
