Rachna Khaira of The Tribune has bagged the prestigious RedInk Award for 'Journalist of the Year' for her expose during 2018 on the functioning of the UIDAI and its Aadhaar data cache.
A statement from the Press Club Mumbai said Khaira's investigation confirmed that personal data of millions of citizens was at a risk of being hacked or traded for a price.
By running a series of stings, the journalist was able to raise serious doubts about the claims by the government that the Aadhar data stored in UIDAI servers was safe and secure.
Many of the leads provided byKhaira became part of public interest litigation (PIL), which finally led to the onerous and mandatory aspects of Aadhaar being watered down, it said.
However, instead of complimenting the journalist for having brought to light the deficiencies of the system, and the threat posed to the privacy of the citizen, the UIDAI launched police action against Khaira, her editor Harish Khare, and the newspaperThe ...
