The Wire's Sukanya Shantha Wins 'Fearless Journalism' Award for Series on NIA Guilty Pleas

Shantha received The Media Foundation's Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism 2025 in New Delhi on March 20.

The Wire Staff

Shantha received The Media Foundation's Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism 2025 in New Delhi on March 20.

the wire s sukanya shantha wins fearless journalism award for series on nia guilty pleas

P. Sainath hands the award to The Wire's Sukanya Shantha. Photo: The Wire.

New Delhi: The Wire's Sukanya Shantha has been named winner of The Media Foundation's Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism 2025 for her multi-part series on the disproportionate number of guilty pleas in the trials of National Investigation Agency cases.

A year after the National Investigation Agency boasted of a 100% conviction rate, Shantha's investigation found that prolonged detention, near-automatic bail denials and pressure from investigators were pushing dozens of accused, mostly Muslims, to plead guilty before their trials have even begun. ‘The Forced Guilt Project’ was supported by the Pulitzer Center for Crisis Reporting.

Read the full series starting here.

Shivnarayan Rajpurohit, of Newslaundry, received a special mention in the 'Fearless Journalism' category.

Independent journalist Nidhi Suresh won the Kamla Mankekar Award for Journalism on Gender 2025. Ekta Sonawane (Queerbeat) and Tejas Vaidya (BBC Gujarati) received special mentions.

This article went live on March twentieth, two thousand twenty six, at fifty-seven minutes past six in the evening.

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