New York

Indian journalists Anand RK and Suparna Sharma have won the prestigious Pulitzer Prize for their work highlighting digital surveillance and cyber fraud.

Anand and Sharma won the award, announced on Monday, in the Illustrated Reporting and Commentary category. They share the award with Natalie Obiko Pearson of Bloomberg.

According to The Pulitzer Prizes website, the award-winning work titled “trAPPed”, produced for Bloomberg, narrates the "riveting account" of a neurologist in India who was held under a “digital arrest” through her phone, using a blend of "visuals and words" to underscore the "growing global challenges of surveillance and digital scams".

The Pulitzer Prizes, administered by Columbia University, are regarded as among the highest honours in journalism, literature and music composition, recognising excellence in reporting and storytelling.

The Pulitzer Prize is based on the will of the 19th century, Joseph Pulitzer who stood out as the very embodiment of American journalism. Hungarian-born, an intensely indomitable figure, Pulitzer was the most skillful of newspaper publishers; a passionate crusader against dishonest government; a fierce, hawk-like competitor who did not shrink from sensationalism in circulation struggles; and a visionary who richly endowed his profession.

In writing his 1904 will, which made provision for the establishment of the Pulitzer Prizes as an incentive to excellence, Pulitzer specified solely four awards in journalism, four in books and drama, one for education, and five traveling scholarships.

Aniruddha Ghosal, a Hanoi-based reporter, was a winner in the International Reporting category for an investigation into the US Border Patrol’s secret use of mass-surveillance tools originally created in Silicon Valley and further developed in China.

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The series also exposed its use by China and other countries. The Pulitzer Prizes, highest journalism awards in the US, are administered by Columbia University’s Graduate School of Journalism.