The police have arrested four ‘local rowdies’ in Kundrathur for the murder of G Moses.

G Moses, a correspondent with the Tamilian TV channel, was hacked to death in Kundrathur, Tamil Nadu, on Sunday evening.

The Hindu newspaper reported that Moses was killed for his coverage of the illegal sale of poramboke land. But his father, Gnanaraj Jesudasan, told journalist Sandhya Ravishankar that Moses didn’t write about land grabbing. “Moses did not report on land grabbing. He was falsely accused by local rowdies of instigating owners of grabbed land to remove the stones kept to mark plots.”

An FIR filed by Jesudasan, himself a reporter with the Tamil daily Maalai Tamizhagam, states that Moses was called out of his house by Manoj Selvan, reportedly a young man known to his family, at 10.45pm and “they left together”.

Jesudasan thought his son was going out with friends. But he soon heard cries and rushed out, as did a neighbour. Moses had been attacked with knives just a short walk from his house. He had tried to flee towards his home, according to the Hindu, but was cut down.

Moses was taken to Chromepet Government Hospital, where he was declared brought dead at 12:30am. In the FIR, Jesudasan names four persons – Manoj Selvam, Venkatesan Sekar, Vignesh Tirumalai, Navamani Duraiswamy – who have all been arrested and booked for murder.

Condemning Moses’s murder, the Tamil Nadu Women Journalists Forum said the police must also be held accountable because the journalist had complained to them of facing a threat to his life.

The Lede reported the Dravida Munnetra Kazhagam president MK Stalin expressing “shock and condemnation” over Moses’s murder. “Immediate and stringent action needs to be taken against the criminals behind this act,” Stalin said in a statement to the news website. “The DMK will stand by and uphold the freedom of the press."

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