Biased police, embedded media?

The coverage of the Hyderabad blasts has provoked a statement from the Press Council Chairman. Responding to a complaint from the National Minorities Commission, Justice Katju advised restraint while reporting bomb blasts. The AP Civil Liberties Monitoring Committee has also complained to Katju about TV coverage of the blasts. And the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association (JTSA) analysing the investigations and the media’s role, had some very unpleasant things to say about the latter.

There are two charges being made against the media coverage of the blasts: 1) it is pushing the investigative agencies to arrest innocent Muslims; 2) it is creating an anti-Muslim mood. The JTSA alleges that such a mood influences the courts. Bail is not only denied because of the media hype about terror suspects, but the latter hesitate to apply for bail given the hype. Ultimately, says the JTSA statement, the media creates the ‘collective conscience’ that was cited by the Supreme Court to send a man whose guilt was not fully established to the gallows (Afzal Guru).

Are these serious charges true?

A bomb blast is a sensational event, warranting Page One banner headlines. But does the media have to report everything the police tells it? Is there place for leaving out some details, and also for doubting the police?

Many have complained that within hours of the Hyderabad blasts, the media flashed the names of the Indian Mujahideen (IM) and even of individuals (Syed Maqbool and Imran). Maqbool, arrested last year by the Delhi Police Special Cell, had reportedly told them that he and Imran had done a recee of Dilsukhnagar, the very spot where the blasts occurred. Surely that’s big news? It’s obvious that the Special Cell gave copies of this interrogation report to the media, and the media attributed the information to the interrogation report. It is difficult to fault the media on this point.

What the media did not do was state the dubious record of the Delhi Police Special Cell, which was exposed a mere six months back by the JTSA in their analyses of acquittals in 16 terror cases handled by the cell. Magistrates had castigated officers of the cell for manufacturing evidence, and recommended action against them. A CBI inquiry conducted on orders of the Delhi High Court had also recommended action against some Special Cell officers for the same reason.

Not to mention this, while flashing documents received from the same cell, is selective reporting. Readers must be told that the spot where the blast occurred, killing 17 persons, was surveyed by terror suspects, according to a statement made by them to the police. But readers must also be told that these very police have been proved by courts to have manufactured evidence in terror cases. Then readers can judge how much to believe.

Like other papers, Mumbai Mirror carried excerpts of the interrogation report the morning after the blasts. It also quoted Delhi Police Special Cell DCP Sanjeev Yadav, who claims to have solved the Pune blasts of last August, for which Maqbool, Imran and two others were arrested. Yadav was in charge of five of the 16 investigated by the JTSA, that ended in acquittals and court reprimands. He was also indicted by no less a body than the NHRC for conducting a fake encounter in Delhi in 2006 in which five persons were killed. The Delhi government has ordered a magisterial inquiry against him. Surely this should have been mentioned?

While such details may not be immediately available, later reports on the same topic that keep appearing can mention them. '’Hyderabad has a history of terror. Indeed, Dilsukhnagar itself has been targeted earlier, as reported by the press.” (The English press isn’t sure whether it’s been targeted once, twice or thrice previously, but going through the reportage, it would be safe to say twice.) Almost all papers reported that investigations in one of the earlier blasts reached a dead end because two suspects were killed in ‘encounters’, while a third hanged himself while out on bail, alleging police harassment. These are sensational findings. Shouldn’t more details have been dug out from the files? No paper did so.

Nor did any paper think fit to ask their ‘sources’ why the Hindutva angle wasn’t being pursued, given that Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad had been bombed by Hindutva terrorists (as per Swami Aseemanand’s confession made in front of a magistrate, later retracted). In all the technical details about timers, IEDs, and ammonium nitrate (do lay readers care about the composition of the bomb?) – again, all of it fed by the police – why wasn’t it pointed out that Hindutva terrorists too had used IEDs (in Hyderabad itself in Mecca Masjid and in Ajmer), ammonium nitrate (Malegaon 2006 and 2008) and cycles (Malegaon 2006)? At any rate, there were contradictory reports about the composition of the bombs. The NSG was quoted in two separate reports by Indian Express as saying that this time, the ingredients were different from last August’s Pune blasts (to which the police are linking this blast). In fact, said one NSG officer, “If the same terror module was involved in the blast, they have definitely changed their modus operandi.’’ Yet, the conclusion was reached within three days that the bombs had the IM stamp on them.

The Hyderabad Police record of handling terror cases is no better than that of the Delhi police Special Cell. They had arrested and tortured Muslims for the 2007 Mecca Masjid and Lumbini Park and Gokul Chaat blasts. All the arrested Muslims were acquitted and last year the AP government paid compensation to some of them.

This time too, the Hyderabad police immediately picked up those Muslims acquitted in the Mecca Masjid blasts! However, sections of the media (Indian Express) did report the anger among the community at this. But while reporting that these men were picked up, the majority of English newspapers parroted the police line. The Times for instance, described one of the men picked up, Rayeesuddin, as a ‘close associate of controversial cleric Maulana Mohammed Naseeruddin’s son Raziuddin Naser, an accused in terror cases across the country’, implying guilt by association. DNA said: “…hundreds of people with criminal records, especially the suspects in the 2007 Mecca Masjid blast, have been questioned.’’ Neither the Times nor DNA mentioned in these reports that Rayeesuddin and these ‘suspects’, had been acquitted. The Times front-page report mentioning Rayeesuddin was continued inside. There, the Hyderabad police were asked why they were questioning those acquitted, only to get the reply: “We are trying to find out if these people carried out the blasts to avenge their torture.’’ So, the Times gave this headline to their inside page story: ‘Blast to avenge cop torture?’ Surely this insinuation in a headline was adding insult to injury?

Even those acquitted by the high court in the Haren Pandya muder case were referred to as ‘accused in the case’. Some of these individuals were now being suspected for the Hyderabad blasts.Again, the IE reported the case of the unlucky Abdul Wasey Mirza, who had been injured in the Mecca Masjid blasts, had to drop out of college, and was again injured in the latest blast. The Hyderabad police questioned him too. Reporting this, the DNA made him out to be a suspicious character. Here’s how the report began: “Meanwhile, the investigators have stumbled upon a clue of sorts in the form of a person hailing from old city of Hyderabad.’’ The reporter gave convoluted explanations about how his injuries were different from those suffered by the others, even while quoting police as saying that his presence at both sites could be a mere coincidence, and it would be jumping the gun to regard him as a suspect. The headline to this report was: `Injured again-plain unlucky or a suspect?’ A picture of him in hospital accompanied the report. Did he have a choice about whether his picture could be used nor not?  It was a comment from a reader (on the online version of the report) that said what should have seemed like common sense: “Hang on, Mecca Masjid blast is blamed on Sadhvi Pragya and Company of Hindutva warriors, how can this person be involved in Hindutva and Jihadi versions of terrorism?’’

It certainly seems that even when police are cautious, the media goes ahead to make assertions based on nothing but speculation. One example of this was the Times report on Syed Maqbool (the recEe man). Convicted for murder in 2004, his life sentence was commuted by the AP government in 2009, says the report. It then goes on to quote conflicting allegations about his involvement in two other murders and four blasts. The report ends thus: “But if Maqbool’s hand is established in the Dilsukhnagar blasts, the state would end up as having aided an IM activist in carrying these out.’’

How can a newspaper speculate on an accused in this manner?

Then there were the usual labels. A ToI report headlined ‘Under Pak patronage, 4 IM men strike at will’ had a box headlined: ‘Faces of terror’. The four Muslims named are all absconding. The use of the word ‘alleged’ was conspicuous by its absence, in the three reports filed in the paper on that day. Incidentally, another report said that the IM no longer needs Pakistan’s help to carry out blasts!

Such is the extent of ‘embedded journalism’ in bomb blast cases that readers are told of every move of the investigative agencies. One man picked up somewhere for questioning and let off – does his name have to be mentioned? What effect would doing so have on his life? What would the father of Irfan Landge, arrested for the August 2012 Pune blasts, have felt reading his son’s name in the interrogation report published by the press? His allegations against the Delhi Police Special Cell’s conduct while arresting his son had made news. Couldn’t they have been recalled? After all, the entire background of all the Pune suspects was recalled. Why were these allegations then left out?

Reports filed while fighting deadlines may not be comprehensive or nuanced. But every bomb blast remains in the news for at least a week. That’s enough time to go back and look at every report related to the latest blast. If the press doesn’t do that, allegations of prejudice against Muslims stand. Maybe that’s not the intention; but the effect certainly is the creation of an anti-Muslim mood.

It is also clear that the media goes far beyond the police in making definitive assertions in headlines, merely to grab readers’ attention. Do readers really think blasts can be solved in a few days? But can it be said that the media is pushing the agencies to arrest Muslims? There was one headline (DNA) which did appear to say that: ‘48 hours later, police yet to make arrests’’.  The report itself quotes the Hyderabad Police Commissioner as saying: “We are working on different leads but don’t want to take hasty decisions.”

Apart from that, the press didn’t seem to be working in that direction. But the cumulative effect of using briefings unquestioningly, of blithe speculation, and inadequate backgrounding do end up making an entire community vulnerable to suspicion.