New York: An Indian-origin journalist Megha Rajagopalan, along with two contributors has won the Pulitzer Prize for innovative investigative report.

She exposed a vast infrastructure of prisons and mass internment camps secretly built by China for detaining hundreds of thousands of Muslims in its restive Xinjiang region. Pulitzer prizes are awarded yearly in twenty one categories.

In twenty of the categories, each winner receives a certificate and a $ 15K cash award. The winner in the public service category is awarded a Gold Medal.

She is working for Buzz Feed News won the US’s top journalism award on Friday, along with other Indian-origin journalist. Neil Bedi, Tampa Bay Times journalist won for local reporting.

Neil Bedi along with Kathleen McGrory has been awarded the prize for the series exposing a Sheriff’s Office initiative that used computer modeling to identify people believed to be future crime suspects. About 1K people were monitored under the programme, including children.

Times Executive Editor Mark Katches said Kathleen and Neil unearthed in Pasco County had a profound impact on the community. This is what the best investigative journalism can do and why it is so essential.

Xinjiang series of Megha Rajagopalan won the Pulitzer Prize in the International Reporting category. According to Buzz Feed News in 2017, not long after China began to detain thousands of Muslims in Xinjiang, Rajagopalan was the first to visit an internment camp at a time when China denied that such places existed.

The China Government tried to silence her investigative journalism, revoking her visa and ejecting her from the country, Buzz Feed News wrote in its entry for the prize. Barred from China, she instead travelled to its neighbour Kazakhstan, where many Chinese Muslims have sought refuge.

She located more than two dozen people who had been prisoners in the Xinjiang camps, winning their trust and convincing them to share their nightmarish accounts with the world.