Reporters Without Orders Ep 370: “Poonch felt isolated and abandoned”

Reporters Without Orders

This week, host Basant Kumar is joined by Newslaundry’s Anmol Pritam and The News Minute’s Nidhi Suresh.

While the rest of the country exhaled a sigh of relief at the announcement of a ceasefire in the India-Pakistan conflict, Poonch held its breath – and bled quietly.

Nidhi and Anmol were on the ground, when the cross-border shelling began. Thirteen lives were lost. Thirteen names that won’t make it into strategic briefings or celebration speeches. Parents buried their twins, Zain Ali and Urwa Fatima – born five minutes apart, and died five minutes apart. In another home, a wedding that was about to be planned turned into a funeral when the father of the bride-to-be never came home.

These aren’t just tragic anecdotes. This is the aftermath of a conflict that never really ends for the people living on its edge. Nidhi and Anmol’s reports on the families in both the city and the villages reveal that all of them carry the same expression – numb, disbelief, and tired of being forgotten. Their stories don’t scream, they ache. And in that ache lies a quiet question: why is Poonch always left behind?

They came back with more than interviews. They came back with grief, with names, with stories that deserve to be told. Stories of loss, of resilience, of people who live through war long after the last gun falls silent.

Tune in.

Timecodes

00:00:00 - Introduction

00:02:15 - From Tension to Tranquility: Ceasefire was announced

00:09:34 - Shelling without Warning: The Unseen Threat Lurked in Poonch

00:36:56 - Misinformation flooded in mainstream and social media

00:43: 58 - Recommendations

Recommendations

Nidhi

Society Girl: A Tale of Sex, Lies, and Scandal

Anmol

Saving Private Ryan

Basant

American Man Hunt: Osama Bin Laden

Produced and edited by Hassan Bilal, Ashish Anand and Tista Roy Chowdhury, recorded by Anil Kumar.

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