Sukanya Shantha wins 2025 Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism
Sukanya Shantha, Senior Assistant Editor at The Wire, and member of the Network of Women in Media, India, won the 2025 Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism awarded by The Media Foundation.
Sukanya Shantha won the award for her four-part investigation into the disproportionate number of guilty pleas amongst cases prosecuted by the National Investigation Agency (NIA). The series revealed that the NIA’s high rate of convictions are largely being secured through guilty pleas obtained from accused individuals. Facing the prospect of prolonged incarceration, many of them yield to the pressure to plead guilty in the hope of a reduced sentence. Her citation read, “The reports not only expose this disturbing aspect of the way the country’s premier anti-terror agency conducts its cases, but also point to the flaws in the judicial process that enable such a subversion of the democratic rights of the accused.”
It added, “Ms Shantha is commended for her outstanding investigative reportage, her fairness and dedication, and her courage and tenacity in gathering evidence of wrongdoing on the part of a mighty agency of the state. For her determination to speak truth to power while upholding the highest standards of journalism, Sukanya Shantha is the winner of the Vishwa Nath-Delhi Press Award for Fearless Journalism 2025.”
The Media Foundation also presented the Chameli Devi Jain Award and the Kamla Mankekar Award for Journalism on Gender at the annual event held at the India International Centre, New Delhi on 20 March 2026. The awards were given away by P. Sainath, journalist and Founder-Editor, People’s Archive of Rural India (PARI).
Link to the series: https://pulitzercenter.org/projects/forced-guilt-project
Congratulations, Sukanya!
