India-born journalist gets Pulitzer

India-born Geeta Anand has shared this year's Pulitzer Prize for explanatory journalism with the staff of the Wall Street Journal, the South Asian Journalist Association said on Monday.

Very few South Asians have won the prestigious award. The first was Gobind Behari Lal in 1937.

Anand had submitted two stories about scandals in corporate America -- 'History and Science: In Waksal's Past: Repeated Ousters' and 'Trial Heat: Biotech Analysts Strive to Peek Inside Clinical Tests of Drugs'.

She told SAJA: "I was very excited and so was everyone here at the Wall Street Journal because a big group of us contributed to the winning stories.

"I felt very lucky because you can go through life writing good stories and never win big awards. But if luck and timing are on your side, you get recognised every now and then. In this case, we wrote good stories and they happened to be on a compelling topic."

Anand's first job in the US was at Cape Cod News. Then she moved to Rutland Herald in Rutland, Vermont. She went to the Boston Globe before joining the Wall Street Journal in 1998.

She was India's national champion and record holder in 1982 in women's 100 m and 200 m breaststroke. That year, she represented India in the Asian Games in New Delhi and the Commonwealth Games in Brisbane, Australia.