Gomantak Times, January 13, 2009
A career in public relations definitely ‘pays’ more than journalism. Sujoy Gupta knows better.
This former journalist, who’s just sued anti-mining activist, Seby Rodrigues for libel and claimed Rs.500-crore in the Calcutta High Court in damages for defaming his newfound paymasters…Fomento Mining Company Limited, a leading mining outfit which is engineering a media blitzerieg against anti-mining activists. Gupta who has been hired by the mining firm as ‘vice president corporate communications’, hails from Naxal-ridden Bengal and was the first to manufacture and back a lie about Seby-starring Naxalism scare in the media and the state’s political consciousness. Herculean efforts were made to feed journos with ‘leads’ and photographs which were supposed to show Seby coaxing villagers to revolt. All a part of a skewed brief which comes with being an employee of a mining firm.
Gupta knows which side his bread is buttered. But, somewhere in those villages which are giving way to mammoth mining craters, there are villagers who can still show you the welts and bruises when the police mercilessly battered them for trespassing, what were once their once their own fields. You can’t play drums here the way you can at hip joints like Cavalas. There, house-sized generators running 24 hours, don’t even let you hear your own thoughts most times.
Gupta has now taken up residence in Moira, while claiming to be a resident of Kolkata in his defamation suit. That’s either mischief or a chronic squint, with eyeballs running across two different parts of the country. Or maybe its Moira. Or perhaps it’s just feni (his self-admitted obsession).
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