NewsGate Press Network

By Vineet Dikshit

Friends of Danish Siddiqui held candle light vigils in New Delhi on Saturday, the 17th of July 2021 to pay homage to Pulitzer Prize winner photojournalist who was killed during a cross fire between Afghanistan troops and the Taliban in Spin Boldak district in Kandahar on Friday.

He was on-assignment by the Reuters news agency,  covering situation from the front lines in the war ravaged Afghanistan.

Candles were lit at the Press Club of India and at the Jamia Millia Islamia in the national capital, in attendance by his various admirers who in one voice said,  ‘such a beautiful young and inspiring life cut abruptly too short’.

While holding a candle light meeting at the Press Club of India, Working News Cameraman Association (WNCA) president S N 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,” Sinha added.

Danish Siddiqui was employed with the Reuters since 2011. He had extensively covered conflict situations in Afghanista, Iraq, covered the Rohingya refugee crisis and the protest in Hong Kong and earthquakes in Nepal.

He was based in Mumbai and had received the Pulitzer Prize as part of the photography staff for the Reuters.