NEW DELHI — Veteran journalist Vinod Dua, arguably one of India’s most popular and influential news broadcasters, died here on Saturday. He was 67.
Dua was known for questioning the government of the day in shows he anchored and had recently been hounded by the police in states ruled by the Bharatiya Janata Party for criticising the government.
Dua had been hospitalised with COVID-19 earlier this year and spent several days under intensive care at the time. His daughter, actor and comedian Mallika Dua, who was issuing updates on his condition after he was admitted to hospital last week with post-COVID-19 complications, noted that he was “beyond critical” and later confirmed his death at 5 pm on Saturday (December 4).
His wife and companion of many years, Chinna Dua, a doctor, died in hospital earlier this year of COVID-19. Mallika said that her father was “unable to come to terms with losing the light of his life”.
In a long and varied career as a news anchor and television presenter, Dua worked at a number of news organisations, including the national broadcaster Doordarshan and NDTV.
He was a contributing editor at The Wire from 2016 to 2018. where he presented a daily news show, Jan Gan Man ki Baat. in 2019, he began working at Swaraj TV and HW News.
In 2018, at the height of the #MeToo movement, Dua was accused of sexual harassment by filmmaker Nishtha Jain in relation to an incident she said had happened in 1989. Though he strenuously denied the charge, Dua voluntarily suspended his routine work and agreed to have the charge examined by an independent panel.
The special committee set up by The Wire – the only such initiative by a media house at the time – was headed by a retired judge of the Supreme Court but was eventually unable to complete its work or reach any conclusion.
In 2020, Delhi Police’s crime branch registered an FIR against Dua on the basis of a complaint filed by a Delhi Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson accusing him of “fake news marketing” through his show on the YouTube channel HW News.
One of the complaints is that Dua made “fun of the Prime Minister by using derogatory word as a scaremonger”. A Delhi court had granted him anticipatory bail.
In the same month, June, Himachal Pradesh police opened n investigation and summoned Dua after charging him with sedition, following a complaint by BJP leader Ajay Shyam, who said Dua had made “bizarre allegations” on a 15-minute YouTube show on March 30, 2020 on the return of migrant workers from Delhi following the government’s sudden announcement of a lockdown.
In a landmark judgment earlier this year, the Supreme Court eventually quashed the charges, noting that every journalist is entitled to protection. — (The Wire)