Journalist Nikhil Wagle is no stranger to violence. During the course of his career, he’s been attacked six times. But the events of last evening in Pune were different.
“It was a mob lynching attempt on me. It was traumatic,” he told Newslaundry over the phone. “It was a narrow escape from death…I am still in shock because of the intensity of the attack and the hate.”
Last evening, Wagle and four others were on their way to a ‘Nirbhay Bano Sabha’ event when BJP and Shiv Sena (Shinde) workers attacked their vehicle at four different places. Days before, the journalist had been in the centre of a controversy for a social media post that criticised Narendra Modi and LK Advani. An FIR was filed against him and the BJP Pune unit threatened to disrupt the event if Wagle turned up to speak.
Newslaundry learned that before Wagle left for the event, the Pune police unofficially detained him for four hours to try and convince him not to attend. Yet the police, who were well aware of the threats against Wagle, did not provide him with appropriate protection.
Newslaundry spoke to four of the five people, including Wagle, who were in the vehicle to piece together what happened.
The sequence of events
On February 4, Wagle on X criticised Modi and Advani over the latter receiving the Bharat Ratna. In Marathi, he wrote that the award was “from one rioter to another”. On February 6, BJP leader Sunil Deodhar filed a police complaint against Wagle.
This story was originally published in newslaundry.com. Read the full story here.