Jigna Vora’s Frightening Ordeal: Confessions of a ‘Framed’ Journalist
Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], October 25: Jigna Vora went from being a crime journalist to being falsely accused of conspiring with Chhota Rajan in the 2011 murder of senior investigative crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey. Acquitted after a 7-year-long legal battle, Vora – who is currently in the ‘Bigg Boss’ house, offers an intimate look into her life in prison in an exclusive interview with Briefly. Mumbai (Maharashtra) [India], October 25: Jigna Vora went from being a crime journalist to being falsely accused of conspiring with Chhota Rajan in the 2011 murder of senior investigative crime reporter Jyotirmoy Dey. Acquitted after a 7-year-long legal battle, Vora – who is currently in the ‘Bigg Boss’ house, offers an intimate look into her life in prison in an exclusive interview with Briefly.
In the first episode of Briefly’s ‘Framed’, a docu-series that follows first-person accounts of victims who have been ‘framed’, Vora described prison as a place where she finally felt she was free from judgment. “Jail became a place like home, where I wasn’t being judged. I used to chant Hanuman Chalisa 500 times in jail,” the 49-year-old said. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9PkPrTXXT4w
So deep are the scars from those terrifying years, that Vora says she still trembles in fear at just the mention of police. Despite being acquitted, Vora has new battles to fight every day. “Nothing has changed since my acquittal, I’m still jobless. They want to date me, but no one wants to give me a job,” she says, refusing to be broken by the system that snatched away not just her chance at a normal life but also her son’s chance at a normal childhood.
The first episode of Briefly’s ‘Framed’, which sees Vora tell her truth in her own words, picks up where Hansal Mehta’s acclaimed Netflix series ‘Scoop’, based on her book ‘Behind the Bars in Byculla’, left off. As Vora says, “There is much more than what has been shown in ‘Scoop’.”
‘Framed’ is an effort to provide a platform for those who have been falsely accused, offering them the opportunity to share their stories.
‘Briefly’ (https://www.youtube.com/@brieflybynewj), NEWJ’s english channel, covers everything from exclusive interviews to docu-series and in-depth news. Backed by Reliance-Jio, NEWJ (New Emerging World of Journalism) was founded in 2018 by Shalabh Upadhyay, Anshuman Sarda and Kunal Chaudhary on the mantra ‘Stories of India, by India, for India’. India’s largest social-first publisher, NEWJ offers credible news in 13 languages and has a daily reach of over 70 million with over 1 billion views per month. The video-only publisher with a #BharatFirst-focus, is committed to playing an instrumental role in building a ‘Digital India’ through impactful and India-centric storytelling. Ranked 25th among the top 50 Global Digital Media Companies by Tubular Labs Ltd, NEWJ has also expanded to offer 360-degree creative digital solutions to brands under its vertical ‘ASK Media Labs’.
