Pratik Sinha is a former Indian software engineer and journalist who co-founded a non-profit fact-checking website called Alt News with Mohammed Zubair.
Wiki/Biography
Pratik Sinha was born on April 28 and hails from Ahmedabad, Gujarat. His zodiac sign is Taurus.
Childhood photos of Pratik Sinha with parents
He attended Prakash High School in Ahmedabad. Pratik Sinha’s mother is Gujarati from Ahmedabad, while his father is Bengali. As a result, Pratik spent his childhood moving between cities, including Calcutta during his summer vacations. Raised by radical parents, Sinha developed social awareness at an early age. In an interview, he said of his childhood:
My childhood was one where dinner table conversations revolved around socio-political issues. So that’s always been my thought. “
From 1999 to 2003, he studied Bachelor of Engineering at Bangalore Institute of Technology, affiliated with Visvesvaraya Technological University, Bangalore, Karnataka. . After completing his formal education, Sinha moved to the United States to pursue a career as a software engineer. Later, he went to Vietnam. In March 2013, he returned to Ahmedabad. The turning point in his life came in 2016, when the Jan Sangharsh Manch, a civil liberties organization founded by his parents, joined hands with the Una Dalit Atyachar Ladai Samiti to march from Ahmedabad to Una. While documenting the march, Sinha recognized her inner desire to pursue a career in journalism. Talking about the same in an interview, he said,
I documented the march on social media. That had a big impact and I thought maybe I should do something media-related. Additionally, I wasn’t very happy with my engineering career. I feel like my work will only benefit the financially privileged. “
Later, he started living in Kolkata, West Bengal.
appearance
Height (approximately): 5′ 9″
Hair color: black (semi-bald)
Eye color: black
family
Pratik Sinha’s father Mukul Sinha is an Indian human rights activist and a lawyer in the Gujarat High Court, Ahmedabad, on May 12, 2014 He died of lung cancer. Pratik’s mother Nirjhari Sinha has been working as a scientist for 35 years. Mukul and Nirjhari co-founded the Jan Sangharsh Manch, an independent civil rights organization that addresses labor and workers’ rights issues. The civil liberties organization has led the charge against the injustices suffered by victims of the 2002 riots and their families; Mukul Sinha is the legal representative of these families. Nirjhari Sinha is also a director of Pravda Media Foundation, a non-profit company under which Alt News is affiliated. Pratik has no siblings.
Pratik Sinha’s parents
Pratik Sinha and his mother
religion
Pratik Sinha is an atheist.
Pratik Sinha posts on Facebook that he is an atheist
Profession
After completing his formal education, he started working with Day Begins Engineering Innovations Pvt Ltd. From 2003 to 2005, he worked at Ubiqtech Software Private Ltd, Bangalore as a Senior Software Engineer. At Ubiqtech, he worked on product design and development for the company’s flagship firewall and VPN products. From 2004 to 2009, he was a technical staff member at Arada Systems, Bangalore. He held various positions at Arada Systems, including software developer, kernel engineer, and enterprise support group manager. Later, he joined Cloudleaf, Inc as a senior software engineer. In 2009, he started working as a freelancer at Humbug, a Vietnamese software development company. In May 2012, he joined InfoNam, Inc., a multinational software outsourcing organization, as a technical coordinator in Vietnam. From August 2013 to February 2014, he worked as a Senior Embedded Software Engineer at ReadMe Systems Inc, Ahmedabad. On February 9, 2017, Pratik Sinha founded the Alt News website in Ahmedabad to fight fake news together with Mohammed Zubair. For about a year, Zubair only helped Sinha run the site while continuing to work for Nokia. Zubair eventually quit his job at Nokia in September 2018 and joined Alt News as a full-time employee. In 2022, Sinha announced that it would set up a branch in Kolkata, West Bengal.
dispute
Offensive tweets against Lord Ganesha
After the arrest of Mohammed Zubair on June 27, 2022, a Twitter user named Hanuman Bhakt @balajikijaiiin shared that Pratik Sinha ) in 2015, in which he mocked Lord Ganesha and questioned whether a man with an elephant head existed. Hanuman Bhakt tagged the Delhi Police in his post, urging them to take action against Zubair.
Hanuman Bhakt’s response to Pratik Sinha’s 2015 tweet
Hanuman Bhakt had previously highlighted Zubair’s 2018 tweets that led to his arrest by the Delhi Police for allegedly hurting religious sentiments.
Facts/Trivia
- His Twitter username is free_thinker.
- After his arrest in June 2022, multiple media outlets reported that Zubair’s bank account had seen transactions exceeding Rs 5 million in the previous days. Pratik Sinha, co-founder of Alt News, denied the accusations against Zubair via tweets, saying that police linked donations received by Alt News to Zubair.
Fact check: Absolutely a lie. Police are linking donations received by Alt News to Zubair. All funds received by Alt News go to the organization’s bank, not to any individual. I have a bank statement from Zubair’s personal account that exposes this lie. pic.twitter.com/esrmEVpTPp
— Pratik Sinha (@free_thinker) June 28, 2022
- Like his father, Pratik Sinha is also an outspoken critic of former Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi. After Sinha returned to Ahmedabad from Vietnam in March 2013, his father was diagnosed with lung cancer in August 2013. In 2014, he collaborated with his father to set up a Facebook page called “The Truth About Gujarat”. This political blog exposes poor governance in Gujarat. Government and its leaders. The “About” section of the page says,
A campaign to stop subversion of the rule of law and bring justice to victims. “
The page was set up after the CBI released a chargesheet against several Gujarat policemen who were found guilty of working on the instructions of Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah , shot dead four people in cold blood during a fake confrontation, and at least three police officers have charged the officers with guilt. Police including GL Singhal.
- Along with co-founder Mohamed Zuber, he has been shortlisted for the 2022 Nobel Peace Prize by the Oslo Peace Institute.
- Sinha speaks Bengali in addition to Hindi and English, but he cannot read or write.
- He is not a vegetarian.
Pratik Sinha posts on Facebook that he is not a vegetarian
- He received the OSM Annual Inspiration Award at the Outlook Social Media Awards (2018).
Pratik Sinha wins OSM Inspiration of the Year Award (2018) at Outlook Social Media Awards
- In 2019, he co-authored the book India Misinformation: The Real Story, which aims to identify the key promoters of fabricated news, expose the propaganda machine, and familiarize readers with techniques for detecting fake news.
Indian Miseducation: The True Story
Categories: Biography
Source: HIS Education