NEW DELHI, 17 Jul: Candlelight vigils were held at the Press Club of India and Jamia Millia Islamia here on Saturday to pay homage to Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist Danish Siddiqui.
Siddiqui was killed during clashes between Afghanistan troops and the Taliban in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar on Friday. He was covering the situation in Kandahar.
While holding a candlelight meeting at the Press Club of India, Working News Cameraman Association (WNCA) president SN Sinha said that Siddiqui scaled the heights of his profession while documenting wars, riots and human suffering.
“He worked with passion and dedication about the stories he covered and always focused on the people caught up in difficult circumstances,” Sinha said in a statement.
The WNCA expressed concern over the “growing trend of attack on media persons while doing their professional duties.”
“…Media fraternity is always working as frontline warriors and working under increasing threat and it’s a matter of deep concern to the working journalists and democratic world,” it said in a statement.
Jamia Millia alumnus Md Meharban along with mass communication student Srijan Chawla organized a candlelight vigil, attended by over 500 people, outside the university’s gate number 17.
Meharban remembered Siddiqui, who was his college senior and mentor in the profession.
Siddiqui’s work as a photojournalist with Reuters news agency since 2011 involved reporting on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, the Rohingya refugee crisis, the protest in Hong Kong and earthquakes in Nepal.
Based in Mumbai, he had received the Pulitzer Prize as part of the photography staff of the news agency. He graduated with a degree in economics from Jamia Millia Islamia, Delhi. He had a degree in mass communication from the AJK MCRC in Jamia in 2007.
Starting his career as a television news correspondent, he switched to photojournalism and joined Reuters as an intern in 2010. (PTI)
