His family was displaced by the violence and moved to a government shelter in Bijapur. After his father died when Mukesh was a child, he and his elder brother Yukesh were brought up by their mother, an anganwadi worker. In 2013, she died of cancer.

“He (Mukesh) did his best to try and save his mother, but he just had Rs 50,000. As friends, we helped him with whatever we could,” said a friend.

He recalled Mukesh telling him that his family could not even afford to buy milk during his childhood. “He loved his mother a lot, but due to the conditions in Bijapur, she had to send him away to a school in Dantewada so he could complete his studies. He sold mahua liquor and worked as a bike mechanic to make ends meet,” the friend said.

Seeing his brother Yukesh working as a freelance journalist, he developed a liking for the profession, which soon became his passion. He worked for several news channels, including Sahara, Bansal, News18, and NDTV, and made a name for himself by doing ground reports from encounter spots deep inside forests that are typically Naxal territory.

Mukesh was also known to help other journalists in navigating the state, often taking them to hard-to-reach areas on his motorbike.

One such journalist said, “I still remember him telling me, ‘Dada kaunsi story hai? Kab aa rahe ho? (Brother what story are you doing? When will you come?).’ He worked purely out of journalistic vigor. Not once for a story was there anything that was offered to him but friendship. For a vast majority of state correspondents, Mukesh was the person who took them to the spot. He earned a paltry amount for the news stories that he provided, and his income was extremely unstable. As a young journalist, all he had was enthusiasm.”

“We would go to Bastar and come back, but local reporters like Mukesh live there and always carry the risk of being targeted. For four-and-a-half years, Mukesh did this over and over again, not just for me, but for many others. It was on his back that stories about Bastar and the state-Maoist conflict were told. If one core principle of journalism is to inform, to reach new areas, to give voice to the voiceless, journalists like Mukesh are peerless,” he said.

Ranjan Das, a journalist from Dantewada and a close friend of Mukesh’s, remembers how in 2016, Mukesh took him in when he had moved to Bijapur from Dantewada.

“He lived in a mud house, paying Rs 2,200 rent. He allowed me to live with him for five years as we were both facing financial issues. Most of the journalists in Bijapur live on rent. He was extremely sensitive to Adivasi issues, especially jal, jungle aur zamin (water, forest and land). His coverage of protests by villagers, fake encounters, civilian killings, poor infrastructure, malnutrition, and poor health facilities, made him popular among Adivasis too. He loved and lived his work,” Das said.

“For his ground reports, he faced pressure from the government several times, and was also threatened by Maoists when he criticized them for the destruction of public property. We feared being harmed by them (Maoists), but never could we imagine being harmed by a criminal,” he said.

Taking inspiration from other journalists, Mukesh started his own YouTube channel, named Bastar Junction, which has 1.66 lakh subscribers. “He started by getting a few hundred to a thousand rupees depending on our news. But his YouTube channel got him Rs 20,000 a month, and once even Rs 50,000. Just when his life had become stable, this tragedy occurred,” said Das.

In 2021, Mukesh was among a group of seven journalists who helped security forces negotiate with Maoists to safely bring back a CoBRA jawan held captive in Tekalguda.

Mukesh did a report that came out in NDTV on December 25 that highlighted the poor condition of a road in Bijapur, after which the government initiated an inquiry. The contractor for this road was Mukesh’s cousin Suresh Chandrakar. Angered by his story, Suresh’s brother Ritesh allegedly killed Mukesh, police said. Police said Suresh was the mastermind behind the murder.