UMAR KHALID | From the Eyes of His Loved Ones
Umar Khalid, who once dreamed of playing cricket for India, now faces serious terrorism charges from the government. The vilification spurred by media trials reached its peak with a chilling assassination attempt. He's been in prison for 3.5 years as of March 2024, highlighting a worrying crackdown on dissent in India. This is his story, as told by his loved ones.
Divya : A Mother Finds Herself After a Crash
Divya, a single mother, encountered significant challenges following a car accident, an event that altered her life forever. She endured nearly a year of being bedridden, isolated from her son and struggling with uncooperative home nurses. Little did she know that these hardships would lead her to discover herself and take control of both her life and her son's, a fruit of her resilience.
What Makes a Home? | Demolition Drives in Delhi
The video delves into the lives of Delhi's slum dwellers, whose homes perpetually face the threat of demolition. In a recent case, on May 19, 2023, residents of Priyanka Gandhi Camp in Vasant Vihar, Delhi, received official notices from the National Disaster Response Force (NDRF) to vacate the land by June 15, 2023. Despite legal battles fought by the PG camp residents, their ‘Jhuggis’ (slums) were ultimately demolished. Between April 1 and July 27, 2023, Delhi witnessed 49 demolition drives. In 2023, at least 1600 homes have been destroyed and about 2,50,000 are homeless in India’s Capital. This story is about the plight of those who become homeless overnight.
RIGHTS DENIED, VOICES SILENCED - Don't Maharashtra's Tribals have Right To Protest?
In Maharashtra's #gadchiroli district, Lalsu bravely exposes the environmental and cultural impacts of #mining. Shockingly, 21 tribals from 70 villages are arrested for protesting against injustice. Protest, their sole voice, is under threat as the government’s heavy-handed suppression of dissent intensifies, revealing a disturbing pattern.
Caught in Crossfire
Tulsi, a former Naxalite, was forcibly abducted and had no option but to join the Maoist army, suffering greatly under the insurgents. In the same Maoist-State conflict in Chhattisgarh state, Soni Sori, a former educator and tribal rights activist, endured brutality and sexual assault at the hands of the police. In the volatile region of Bastar, often referred to as the "Red Corridor,"…
Fish Without Water
Thakur Ram Orkera is just one of many tribals who depend on the forest for their daily needs. However, their source of survival is at stake. Orkera, along with thousands of other indigenous individuals in Chhattisgarh's Hasdeo forest region, faces the potential loss of both livelihood and cultural heritage due to governmental interventions and a major corporation's coal mining plans. Undeterred, Thakur and the Adivasis are resolute in their stance: enough is enough.
The Men Behind Violence In Manipur
Newsreel Asia revisits Manipur, a state in Northeast India, now besieged by near-daily attacks since May 3, 2023. Moving from survivors' homes to violence epicentres, this mini-documentary investigates alarming accusations that implicate both local extremist factions and state security forces in the attacks on the Kuki-Zo tribal community.
Manipur - A Surge of Violence
Kai Neu, a nurse, and Thanghoulal, a driver, represent many from the Kuki-Zomi tribes who have suffered ceaseless violence since May 3, 2023, in Manipur, a state in Northeast India. They inhabit Churachandpur district, which remained inaccessible with no Internet connectivity either.
Conversation Over Food: On Communal Violence, with a Muslim Family in Haryana's Nuh District
Mohammed Soheb, a farmer residing in the predominantly Muslim district of Nuh in the North Indian state of Haryana, has long endeavored to shed light on its status as India's least developed district. Soheb, along with his fellow Nuh inhabitants, has always taken pride in the harmonious coexistence of Muslims and Hindus in the region.
Cart Puller
More than 41,000 daily-wage workers died by suicide in India in 2021, as per the government?s National Crime Records Bureau, which also showed these workers form the country?s largest group among the suicide victims. This short film depicts a day in the lives of cart pullers in the national capital of Delhi.
Show Me the Way Home
A young Rohingya man, Ali Johar, fled persecution in Myanmar?s Rakhine state and later made his way to India, as he had heard that Indian people and their government were kind-hearted. Did he, and his fellow refugees, experience that kindness?
Unheard Echoes
Duka Devi is nearly 100 years old but her activist spirit appears to be as youthful as it must have been during the ?Chipko? movement she was part of decades ago. In that agitation in Raini village in Uttarakhand state?s Chamoli district in the 1970s, women from the Bhotia indigenous community hugged trees and offered to be shot by loggers, successfully preventing fell of trees.
Leopard in the Neighbourhood
Sarveshwar Prasad?s family is among the very few people in his village in northern India?s Uttarakhand state who have not migrated away out of fear of leopards. These wild cats are often seen wandering in residential areas in the state?s Pauri Garhwal district and sometimes mauling humans, even to death.
Siliguri
Host Mariya Rajan's quick visit to three hamlets near lush green tea gardens in Siliguri city and surrounding areas reveal that at least one child has gone "missing" in each of them. Was it just a coincidence, or is something changing in that region - which, being a gateway to the northeast India as well as the neighbouring countries …
Sex Trafficking in Mumbai
Shama (name changed) and her underage daughter are brought from West Bengal state to Mumbai city by human traffickers with the promise of a job. Soon they find themselves in separate brothels. Their stories reflect what many of the more than 1,600 girls and women in Mumbai …
A Cry for Dignity
Kamal Masih, a lawyer practising in a region near India’s border with Pakistan, has represented many victims of discrimination and violence against Dalit Christians in Punjab state. However, Hindu nationalists claim that Christians seek to convert Dalits by offering monetary benefits.
Why are Minorities Attacked in India?
About 200 people barged into a church in Roorkee city’s Solanipuram area in Uttarakhand state on Oct. 3, vandalised its property and beat up Christians, including women. When the Christians filed a police plaint, three people lodged a counter complaint alleging that workers of the church …
Women Rise Up
Women from rural India assemble in a village in the north Indian state of Haryana to take an oath, and declare, that they will not marry, or allow other women in their families to do so, before they are 21 years old. Could this be the beginning of a revolution among the country’s women?
Lives on Fire
A seven-year-old girl witnesses her mother?s death after a portion of land caves in, burying her under debris in Jharia coalfields in India's Jharkhand state, where an underground fire has been raging for over 100 years due to unscientific mining. The girl's father, Dilip Bauri, recalls the incident …