Monica Jha is an independent journalist based in India. She reports on marginalisation, organised crime, and ecology. She specialises in investigative reporting and longform storytelling. Her recent investigations include illegal shark fin trade from India to East Asia, and the crimes of the sand mining mafia in the Indian state of Bihar.
Her works have won Stop Slavery Media Award 2020, Ramnath Goenka Awards 2024, SOPA Award 2024, SEJ’s Outstanding Investigative Reporting Award 2023 and Fetisov Journalism Awards 2021. She was a finalist for True Story Awards 2021, SOPA Awards 2022 and 2020, Red Ink Awards 2022 and 2017 and Lorenzo Natali Media Prize 2015; and longlisted for True Story Award 2024 and One World Media Awards 2021.
She has received reporting grants from Environmental Reporting Collective (2023), Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime and Oxpeckers (2021), Pulitzer Center (2021), and Impact Journalism Grant (2019).
She has also conducted programmes for Thomson Reuters Foundation to train journalists to report on human trafficking and modern slavery.
Other key members of the team are:
- Shamsheer Yousaf: Shamsheer Yousaf is an independent journalist based in Bangalore, India. He focuses on longform multimedia and investigative stories in environment, science, and technology. For these stories, he has been involved in reporting, writing, shooting and editing photos and videos, and producing multimedia stories. He has received fellowships to participate in the International EcoSummit Congress 2023 in Gold Coast, African Investigative Journalism Conference 2022 in Johannesburg and the World Conference of Science Journalists 2017 in San Francisco.
- Sriram Vittalamurthy: Sriram Vittalamurthy is an independent photographer and journalist, with 17 years of experience. Since 2010, he has focused on immersive multimedia storytelling. His work has appeared in Rest of World, London Evening Standard, Mint, FactorDaily, and Fountain Ink. He has an undergraduate degree in Engineering (Computer Science) and a PG Diploma in TV Journalism. He is based in Bangalore, India.
