Body of Pulitzer Prize winner Danish Siddiqui mutilated by Taliban
The body of Indian photojournalist Danish Siddiqui was badly mutilated by the Taliban in Afghanistan, according to several news reports this week.
Siddiqui, 38, was killed last month by the Taliban in the Kandahar region, on the Afghan Pakistan border.
Working for the Reuters news agency, he was based in Mumbai. In 2018, he won the Pulitzer Prize for Feature Photography as part of a Reuters team “for shocking photographs that exposed the world to the violence Rohingya refugees faced in fleeing Myanmar.”
Describing his work, Siddiqui said, “While I enjoy covering news stories – from business to politics to sports – what I enjoy most is capturing the human face of a breaking story.”
Siddiqui grew up in New Delhi, where he attended the Father Agnel School. He earned an undergraduate degree in economics and, in 2007, earned a post graduate degree in mass communications, both from Jamia Millia Islamia, in New Delhi, where his father taught at the Faculty of Education.
Prior to his career as a photojournalist, he was a television correspondent for Hindustan Times and then the TV Today Network. In 2010, he joined Reuters as an intern.
A Muslim, he was married and had young two children.
Siddiqui was embedded with an Afghan army unit which was part of the government’s efforts to fight the Taliban’s attempt to take control of the Kandahar region, following the withdrawal of American troops from Afghanistan.
There are conflicting news reports about Siddiqui’s death. According to some sources, the Afghan unit was ambushed by Taliban forces and he was among those killed in the crossfire. Other reports say that he was captured alive by the Taliban and then executed.
“Danish always chose to be on the front lines so that abuses and atrocities could not remain hidden,” Meenakshi Ganguly, the South Asia director for Human Rights Watch told The New York Times. “The brutality with which Taliban fighters punished Danish proves the abuses that he was documenting.”
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