Indian Journalists Win Pulitzer Prize for Cybercrime Reporting Project
NEW YORK — Two Indian journalists were among the winners of a Pulitzer Prize for an illustrated reporting project that exposed cybercrime in India.
Anand RK and Suparna Sharma, along with Natalie Obiko Pearson, won in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category for a project produced for Bloomberg. The winners were announced Monday.
The report detailed the case of Lucknow neurologist Ruchira Tandon, who was targeted by cybercriminals posing as officials. The scammers forced her into what was described as a six-day “house arrest” and stole Rs 2.8 crore from her bank accounts.
The Pulitzer announcement said the project “cast light on the growing global challenges of surveillance and digital scams.”
Anand is a Mumbai-based illustrator and visual artist, while Sharma is a freelance investigative journalist in India.
Another Indian journalist, Devjyot Ghoshal, was named a finalist in the same category for an investigation into cybercrime and human trafficking in Southeast Asia. The report examined criminal networks that hold people from several countries, including India, in scam compounds and force them to target victims abroad.
Aniruddha Ghosal, a Hanoi-based reporter, was also part of a winning entry in the International Reporting category. That investigation examined the U.S. Border Patrol’s secret use of mass-surveillance tools originally created in Silicon Valley and later developed further in China. The series also reported on the use of those tools by China and other countries.
The Pulitzer Prizes are among the most prestigious journalism awards in the U.S. and are administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism in New York. (Source: IANS)
