Journalist Swati Chaturvedi receives RSF Press Freedom Award for Courage for her book, I Am a Troll, exposing BJP's IT Cell

Journalist Swati Chaturvedi was awarded the Reporters Without Borders (RSF) Press Freedom Award for Courage. Chaturvedi, who works as a freelance journalist, won the award for her book I Am a Troll, an expose on the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP)’s IT cell.

File image of Swati Chaturvedi. Facebook

The award was presented on Thursday at the Getty Images Gallery in London’s Fitzrovia.

"Chaturvedi has been the target of vicious online harassment campaigns, like many other outspoken journalists in India,” the organisation’s statement said. “She responded by using journalistic weapons, investigating the ‘IT cell’ within the Bharatiya Janata Party, the Hindu nationalist party led by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, which is notorious for keeping an army of angry trolls.”

The award for Impact was given to Matthew Caruana Galizia from Malta, a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and activist whose mother, Daphne Caruana Galizia, was assassinated in 2017 following her investigations into corruption.

The award for Independence was given to Inday Espina-Varona from the Philippines, for her extensive reporting on sensitive issues and her marshalling of the #BabaeAko campaign, the Filipino equivalent of the #MeToo movement which took the US and India by storm.

A special ‘L’esprit de RSF’ prize created for British media to mark London’s hosting of the prestigious Press Freedom Awards. The award was presented to The Observer’s Carole Cadwalladr for her investigation into the role of Cambridge Analytica in the Trump and Brexit campaigns.

Scroll quoted Christophe Deloire, secretary-general of the organisation, as saying, “We hope that this recognition will offer them vital support and protection as they carry on their important work in the face of growing pressure against independent media in their home countries.”