Mishra picked up and he knew instantly that his grief , or any designs on a campaign for justice, would have to wait. There had been an IED explosion on the Kutru-Bedra road, 40 kilometres away from Bijapur. The informant said Maoists targeted a security convoy, returning from the forests of Bastar after an anti-insurgency operation. A van was blown apart. There were likely casualties. As a journalist who had reported conflict for 22 years, Mishra knew that another big day on the job was just beginning.

His brain quickly began to work out the logistics. The spot was on a motorable road so the quickest way there would be by car. Mishra owned only a motorcycle. He dialled a colleague, P Ranjan Das, but Das could think of nobody that had a four-wheeler available. He called another friend and journalist Chetan Kapewar, but there was no response. Eventually, after multiple phone calls, he arranged a car from a friend, and Mishra left. He was to pick up Das en route. As always, he didn’t tell his wife and three children where he was going. There was no need for them to worry. In any case, since Chandrakar’s killing, the family hadn’t really slept either.

Journalists like Mishra and Chandrakar are usually first in the line of fire , those who make up the majority of the statistics in reports on attacks on and killings of journalists. Between 1992 and 2025, according to Committee to Protect Journalists, 60 Indian journalists were killed while and for doing their job, the majority of them in the country’s vast hinterland. Mostly freelance or independent journalists, most have no health insurance or social security, and when they are attacked, there are usually no influential journalist bodies calling for justice.

As he drove, Mishra felt an emptiness. Even four days ago, his first phone call would have been to Chandrakar who wouldn’t even have said ‘hello’. He would have asked, “Dada, kaha chalna hai? (where do you want to go)”

“There has been a blast. Get ready first. I’ll tell you on the way,” Mishra would have said in response. On most days, they would have set off on their motorcycles – it is what they used when they rescued a paramilitary commando from the Maoists in 2021; it is what they used when they rode across streams and forests and paths likely minded with IEDs to uncover allegations of fake encounters and state excess; it is what they used to expose corruption, thriving under weak administrative systems.

When he arrived at the small office Chandrakar had created for himself in the middle of Bijapur’s main market, Mishra found Das waiting, sitting in the murdered journalist’s chair. “If Mukesh was here today,” Mishra began to think out loud. Ranjan interrupted quickly, “If Mukesh was here, he would’ve asked us to wait a moment, fetched a cigarette, and asked us to share one together, collect our thoughts and then start work,” he said. That is what they did. They smoked, thought of the blast, and they thought of him.

There were four journalists in the car — Mishra, Das, Shakti Sallur, and Vishal Gomas — all journalists for different regional news organisations. Their phones rang incessantly as they drove the 40 kilometres. At one point, as he got off one phone call, Mishra noticed that he had missed 11 . “Some were from other journalists, some from local leaders including an MLA, one from the vice-chairman of the district council, and two from police officers,” Mishra said. In Bastar, once a news story broke, regional journalists and freelancers become conduits of information — not just for the organisations they work for, but for everyone else, journalists in the state or national capital, politicians, bureaucrats, and often, the police themselves.

This brought influence, but little security to their lives. Experience was their only teacher — telling them where an IED might be buried under the forest floor; telling them how to navigate a harsh geography which has no navigation markers; and telling them how to speak to a people constantly on edge. They owned no bullet proof vests, no medical insurance. Chandrakar was allegedly killed by a contractor and his associates, but he had been threatened before. It was an occupational hazard. Mishra for instance, found himself named as a target in a Maoist press note in April 2021. On February 12, 2013, journalist Nemichand Jain was killed by Maoists in Bastar.

Mishra and his colleagues reached the blast site a little after 11:15am. The area was swarming with security forces. The IED was powerful, creating a crater 16 feet wide and 12 feet long. The Maoists targeted a convoy of personnel returning from an operation in Abujhmad, with the eighth vehicle of a nine-car convoy destroyed completely. Mishra stepped out of the car and began recording on a hand-held camera. Around him, soldiers recovered body parts and destroyed weapons.

Their reportage was a collaborative exercise. Mishra recorded a piece-to-camera for his regional channel, with Gomas acting as his cameraperson, and within minutes, turned cameraperson himself. Chandrakar would’ve done the same. As a stringer for a local television channel, Mishra got paid around ₹750 for each story. Most journalists struggled to make ends meet but Chandrakar seemed to have found a way out, joining a wave of journalists in creating a Youtube channel of his own, called Bastar Junction. Started in April 2021, he built it assiduously, covering the length and breadth of Bastar in his reportage which earned him 150,000 followers. His last video on the channel was 16 minutes long, and was about the condition of schools in the tribal areas of the district. “He told me once that he got ₹50,000 a month which was his highest payout. Mostly, he used to get somewhere ₹10,000-15,000 per month,” said Mishra .

By 12:30 pm, Mishra knew he had enough footage, and began the journey back. Internet penetration has improved in Bijapur over the past decades, but it is often still unstable. Only in Naimed, 32 kilometres from Kutru, could Mishra could stand by the side of the road, and reliably complete a half-hour “live broadcast”.

By 4:00 pm, after a cup of tea, the four journalists arrived back in Mukesh’s office — now the hub of Bijapur’s journalism. They sent the remaining footage and updates. By evening, a bevy of journalists had arrived from Raipur and Jagdalpur, and Mishra arranged places for them to stay the night. Dinner was at 11pm at Danteshwari Dhaba on the edge of town.

Through the evening, Mishra’s mind kept flipping back to his friend. He was worried, Mishra told his colleagues, because an incident as big as the blast held the ability to move the news cycle forward and to make people forget about Chandrakar. They made their now daily phone call to the police, to see if the investigation had moved forward. They made their phone calls to legal experts to strategise about the next steps. They told themselves they wouldn’t stop. Work would go on, but they would not give up. Not till Chandrakar received a modicum of justice.