Priyank Sharma
Ajmer
September 10, 2007, Boraj (Rajasthan)
Young and enthusiastic, 27-year-old Priyank Sharma was among the first ones to have caught on camera the stripping of over 1,000 men in the village of Boraj, near Ajmer, early this week. The village panchayat had asked the men to strip to establish whether any of them was involved in the rape of a 35-year-old woman from the village.
‘‘When I reached there, my first impression was that the men are stripping voluntarily but I later realised that they were doing it out of fear of the village heads and the local police present there. I captured this incident on camera and by the following day, it was picked up by most other news channels,’’ says Sharma.
Sharma who has an undergraduate degree in Journalism and Mass Communication from Kota, always wanted to be a journalist. ‘‘Before picking up the camera for the first time almost three years ago, I worked with a local newspaper in Jaipur. Later, I shifted to television and worked as a reporter for local news channels in Ajmer before I became a stringer for IBN7,’’ says Sharma, who belongs to Bundi.
For this young man who dreams of making it big one day, the job with a leading news channel meant a widow to opportunities. ‘‘Based in Ajmer, I get a lot of opportunities to do stories from the rural areas, which I like. More than 60 per cent people in India continue to live in the rural areas but not even 20 per cent of the news shown during the prime time belongs to them,’’ says Sharma.
He would love to change that.
–Palak Nandi

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