The Sunday Guardian mocks Kathua rape horror?

A screenshot of the article published in The Sunday Guardian

Breaking news items, especially about scams, political hullabaloos, murders and most importantly rapes, send journalists into a tizzy. With the competition to gather a scoop out of a burning issue rising every day, media houses are ready to go to any extent, even to stoop as low as to publish a fake news with a disclaimer confirming the ‘work of fiction’ a ‘pure concoction’.

If journalism’s fight against fake news was not enough, The Sunday Guardian in their issue dated April 15-21, 2018 published an opinion piece titled ‘Anatomy of a Concoction*’ with a slug ‘Fake News’. At a time when the Fourth Estate of Democracy is being questioned daily for the veracity of the news items published, the article comes as a mockery of the field’s own fight for justice.

The opinion piece raises questions on certain details of the Kathua rape case with an embedded intention to germinate seeds of doubt in the mind of a reader. Though the newspaper does not claim the article to be true, the very way it has been written reeks of an attempt to question not only the allegations of the family but also the charge-sheet filed before the court.

The fake news claims that the victim’s parents have been killed over a land dispute which rendered her to be an heir of a huge property and someone is to benefit from her death. It does not stop at that. The article also suggests that the doctor who carried out the autopsy was under immense pressure to forcefully include the rape angle though there wasn’t one.

A popular website contacted the editorial director of the newspaper and on asking whether the house stands by the claims in the article, it was repeatedly told that the article is a work of fiction and the disclaimer suggests the same.

Also read: BREAKING NEWS: Nirbhaya is alive

However, what baffles a reader is the necessity to use real names, including that of the victim (despite a court order against the same) and the use of names of places exactly as in the real case in a fake news which is a work of fiction.

The article not only mentions the name of the Kathua rape victim but also that of the Nagrota rape incident and claims that she too was murdered. The paragraph that mentions the name of the Nagrota rape victim also talks about how the minor was raped inside a madrasa by the Maulvi and adds “No outpouring of outrage is witnessed”. Clearly, this paragraph carries a stench of something journalism has been fighting against — communalising an issue.

In an earlier paragraph, though a ‘concoction’, the article says, “This temple is a one-room structure with three windows, two of which are broken and completely expose the insides of the room. Never mind the fact that (*****) both parents were murdered over a property dispute. Never mind the fact that she herself had inherited a big estate and her own death had several potential beneficiaries. Never mind the fact that an over 60-year-old retired government revenue official is supposed to have asked his son, who is in the middle of his exams, at Meerut, to come home for a day to “satisfy his lust”. And, is it only incidental that this man has been persuading everyone around not to sell their lands to Muslims as a demographic invasion of the entire Jammu region was on? How dare he!? And how dare the accused SPOs be so active against bovine smugglers? They needed to be fixed too. Never mind that no medical records and reports were attached with the charge-sheet that churns out a gut wrenching story capturing every macabre detail.”

All the paragraphs in the entire article bear two meanings. First, the apparent one which the newspaper claims to be fake or a work of fiction and the other that subtly suggests a reader to question the known facts including the charge-sheet. The last sentence that reads, “And, since when, pray, asking for a CBI inquiry has become communal politics and shielding the “rapists”?” too somewhere questions the protests against the slew of insensitive activities surrounding the rape of the minor girl.

This is not journalism and most importantly, not the right time for such mockeries to do the rounds. The country is trying to focus on issues that plague society and such articles reduce the cause of journalism to nothing more than foolhardiness and trivialise issues such as rapes.


(The name of the minor victim has been purposely star-marked unlike in the article of The Sunday Guardian as the law restricts from making public a rape victim's name)