Rohit Khanna
Political Reporting (Broadcast)
CNN-IBN
For someone who directed successful television serials such as Bhanwar and Jassi Jaisi Koi Nahin (Khanna directed the first 400 episodes), taking on the role of an investigative journalist might seem a bit improbable but that’s exactly what Rohit Khanna did.
And when Mehboob Ali, a cabinet minister in the Mulayam Singh Yadav government in UP, agreed to carry drugs in his official car from Lucknow to Delhi, Rohit Khanna, executive producer, Special Investigation Team, CNN-IBN, who was leading the sting operation, knew he had a story on hand. When Ali said he would tell them where to get the drugs from, it was a deal. “The moment he said that in front of the hidden camera, we knew that the risk we took had paid off,” says the 38-year-old. Khanna and his team had collaborated with a group of independent investigative journalists for a sting operation in the heart of UP against three MLAs from the then ruling Samajwadi Party.
Over a period of six months the teams investigated the background of the three MLAs and tried making inroads into their coterie. They succeeded. “In journalism, sting operations are often looked down upon as sensational, but if you can blend in the fact in a sensible format, then that’s where the success of the story lies,” says Khanna.
—Paromita Chakrabarti

Zaffar Iqbal
Regional Reporting, Jammu and Kashmir (Broadcast) NDTV
Zaffar Iqbal was just two years into his job in the Valley when a terror attack on his newspaper office left the 32-year-old with three bullet injuries. “It took me a long time to live down the nightmare,” he says. But when he joined work after four months, this time at NDTV, Iqbal was determined to look at the brighter side of life in the Valley.
Iqbal came across a group of Kashmiri youth who dreamt of being models and he captured their stories. “For anybody who hasn’t experienced life in the Valley, it’s difficult to understand how even such a simple thing as modelling can be such a big deal. Talking to these youths, some of who were Kashmiri Pandits, was a revelation of sorts. For many of them simply waking up to a world where there was no violence in their everyday life was a culture shock. Modelling for them became far more than a career,” says Iqbal.
—Paromita Chakrabarti

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