Ipsa Shatakshi is the wife of Rupesh Kumar Singh, an independent journalist based in Jharkhand who has been in jail since 17 July 2022, for being a suspected Maoist. She is currently pursuing a bachelors degree in law, in the hopes of aiding the legal struggles faced by her family.
In June 2019, Rupesh was detained by teams of the Intelligence Bureau and the Andhra Pradesh State Intelligence Bureau, from Jharkhand’s Hazaribagh district. He was illegally detained for two days and then transferred to the Gaya Police, in Bihar, on 6 June. The police accused Rupesh of being a prominent leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Maoist). Over six months later, Rupesh was released on bail.
In 2021, Rupesh was back in the limelight, after his name surfaced in the list of individuals whose mobile devices had been compromised by the invasive Pegasus spyware. Among the roughly three hundred Indians on the list, forty were journalists and activists. Rupesh was the first Hindi journalist to be identified in the list. His work is centred on human rights violations and the persecution of tribal communities. Subsequently, it was revealed that at least two other members of Rupesh’s family were also on the list.
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