UP: 3 Arrested for Setting Journalist on Fire

Uttar Pradesh police arrested three persons including the son of a village Pradhan who allegedly killed a 37-year old journalist and his friend last week by setting them on fire with sanitizer.

Rakesh Singh Nirbhik who used to write for a Lucknow-based newspaper Rashtriya Swaroop were found with severe burn injuries inside the journalist's home in a village in Balrampur along with his friend Pintu Sahu (34) on Friday last. While Sahu already died, Nirbhik has been rushed to a Lucknow Hospital where he died a few hours later.

Before his death, Nirbhik told hospital officials that he had been writing regularly on alleged corruption by the local village gram Pradhan. In a 2.5 minute video, he can be heard saying that this is the price for reporting the truth.

Three days after the incident, on Monday, the Balrampur police said they had arrested three people for the crime. One of them, Rinku Mishra, is the son of the pradhan. The other accused are Akram, who faces criminal cases, including murder, and his friend Lalit Mishra.

The police said the men doused the victims with an alcohol-based hand sanitiser before setting them on fire.

"The accused were trying to cover up the crime by making it seem like an accident. But there were many loopholes and we understood this was a conspiracy," Dev Ranjan Verma, the Balrampur police chief, told a press conference on Monday night as reported by NDTV.

There were two motives for the murders, the police said: One was Nirbhik's journalism. The other was a payment dispute Sahu had with Rinku Mishra.