New York, May 5 (IANS) Two Indian journalists have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for an art reporting project exposing cybercrime in India.
Anand RK and Suparna Sharma, along with Natalie Obiko Pearson, were announced as the winners on Monday in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category for the report they produced for Bloomberg.
Another Indian journalist, Devjyot Ghoshal, was a finalist in the same category for an expose of cybercrime and trafficking in Southeast Asia, in which criminals use people from several countries, including India, who are held as prisoners in camps and forced to scam victims in other countries. He is based in Bangkok.
Aniruddha Ghosal, a Hanoi-based reporter, was a winner in the International Reporting category for an investigation into the US Border Patrol’s secret use of mass-surveillance tools originally created in Silicon Valley and further developed in China.
The series also exposed its use by China and other countries.
The highest journalism awards in the US, the Pulitzer Prizes, are administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism here.
The illustrated Bloomberg story was a harrowing account about a Lucknow neurologist, Ruchira Tandon, who was forced by cybercriminals pretending to be officials into a “house arrest” for six days and had Rs 2.8 crores looted from her bank accounts.
It “cast light on the growing global challenges of surveillance and digital scams”, the Pulitzer announcement said.
Anand is a Mumbai-based illustrator and visual artist who has won several awards, and Suparna Sharma is a freelance investigative journalist in India.
–IANS
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