B​y Ranjona Banerji
​A minor girl was raped at a madarsa in Sahibabad, by a juvenile who lured her there and by the maulvi. According to the press report posted below, the police are investigating the case, POSCO has been invoked and arrests are imminent.
https://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/delhi/lured-to-gzb-survivor-says-she-was-raped-by-juvenile-and-maulvi/articleshow/63917135.cms
Members of the BJP took out a candlelight march in Delhi, asking for Justice for the girl. They have used the girl’s name. I am not adding it here because the legal stipulations are clear: the rape victim must not be named. After the Kathua victim’s name was made public – she had been gangraped and murdered – many in the media (including myself) assumed that a murder victim’s name need not be kept secret. I apologise for my mistake and several media houses have too:
https://www.telegraphindia.com/india/media-houses-apologise-for-revealing-kathua-victim-s-identity-dgtl-224261
Members of the BJP however had no such compunctions and named the victim, while asking for justice in her name.
Politicians will spin. But how does the media respond? The BJP and its supporters were very angry that in Kathua, Jammu, the gangrape and murder of the eight-year-old was seen as a Hindu versus Muslim crime. They will not acknowledge that it was people who called themselves Hindu who took out rallies in support of the rape accused, nor that the police investigation revealed that the gangrape was planned and executed by a temple priest with the express purpose of driving the community that the girl belonged to, out of the area. Members of the local bar association tried to stop the police from filing a chargesheet.
Similarly, in Unnao, Uttar Pradesh, the accused is a BJP MLA. The minor girl begged for justice. Her father, who went to the police for help for his daughter, was beaten to death in police custody.
The media then has a clear choice: to see this new call for justice for the rape victim of Sahibabad, a blatant attempt by the BJP to communalise the rape of a young girl (your madarsa for my temple, your maulvi for my priest) while conveniently ignoring that the police, and rightly, are acting in this case. And, that so far, no Muslim organisations have held rallies in support of the accused.
Luckily, yesterday at least Zee News did not fail in its apparent obligation to support communal politics by running the hashtag #Arrest the Maulana. While all over social media there was much outrage on how those evil liberals and their “presstitute†channels had neither taken out candlelight marches nor focused solely on this rape. Had the police – in a BJP-ruled state incidentally – failed in its duty, perhaps there would have been outrage. Instead, the police appears to be doing more than it did in Unnao and the BJP has for all practical purposes held a candlelight march against its own government and named the traumatised victim to boot.
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Some in the media meanwhile have managed to rouse themselves to try and understand what is happening in the judiciary. To those of us outside the courts, the extent became evident in January this year when the four senior-most judges after the Chief Justice of India appealed to the people of India to save democracy and understand official assaults being made on the functioning of the judiciary. Since then, it has been crisis after crisis. Conflict of interest in cases apparently involving the Chief Justice, seemingly arbitrary assignment of cases, taking cases away from senior judges and giving them to junior judges… the scenario appears frightening.
Currently, the issue is the elevation of Justice KT Joseph of the Uttarakhand High Court, nominated by the Collegium, being rejected by the government.
While newspapers and websites have managed to decode some of this for the public, barring a few, not all our English or language news channels are that bothered. Does this mean journalists do not understand what is happening or they have been instructed to keep schtum on anything that shows the Modi government in a bad light?
For some clarity, here is what various very senior retired judges have to say and it is not very encouraging for the future of a free judiciary in India:
http://indianexpress.com/article/india/govt-has-struck-at-the-very-heart-of-judicial-freedom-former-cji-rm-lodha-5153513/
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Luckily for our patriotic and intellectually-challenged news channels, Mr Modi has gone to China. Let the games begin.
​Ranjona Banerji is a senior journalist and commentator. She is also Consulting Editor, MxMIndia. The views here are personal​