Don’t remember the sort of backlash that I see now: Scribe who broke the story on Amit Shah’s son

The journalist who broke the story on Amit Shah’s son exponential rise in business profits since 2014 has taken to Facebook to vent out her anger over being trolled online.

Rohini Singh’s investigative story for news website The Wire alleged that a company owned by Jay Shah had witnessed its profits rise by 16,000 times since the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) came to power in 2014. After the story caught the pulse of social media, Jay termed the allegations as “false, derogatory and defamatory”, besides filing a Rs 100 crore lawsuit against The Wire.

Opposition parties have demanded an investigation into the allegations made in the story.

In her Facebook post, Singh recounted that she had made a similar expose on Robert Vadra’s dealings with the DLF Group in 2011 when the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) was in power. “I don't remember the sort of backlash that I see now,” she said.

She added that there was an ongoing “low-level slander campaign” against her.

“As someone famously once said and I paraphrase, news is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising. I don't know about others but I don't wish to lose focus of that,” she wrote in a passionate post, which got shared more than 1,500 times till Monday evening.

The post has been reproduced below:

“I don't want to write a sanctimonious status note on what other journalists should do. I can only speak for myself. My primary job is to speak truth to power. To question the government of the day. In 2011 when I wrote the story on Robert Vadra's dealings with DLF, I don't remember the sort of backlash that I see now. There were no 'only whatsapp or FaceTime audio from now' sort of messages from sources. No seeking to shift the location of meetings to cafes resembling dungeons! A person close to a senior BJP leader brags our call record details are with the party bosses. (Good for them, I say!;)) And of course the low level slander campaign online.

Intimidation and harassment are tools often used by powerful people to get journalists to toe the line. As someone famously once said and I paraphrase, news is something someone wants to suppress, everything else is advertising. I don't know about others but I don't wish to lose focus of that. I would rather quit journalism than do the sort of reportage that I see often around me.

Many of you have been extremely kind to me and are investing me with qualities I probably don't have. I don't do the sort of stories I do because I am ' brave'. I do them because that's journalism and not bravery.”