Letter to the Hoot: easy villains

IN Opinion | 03/03/2007

You think it`s just the scale of the horror of the incident that makes the media jump on it so happily?

The Samjhauta tragedy, security lapses, images of the suspects, and an image of a BSF man on a horseback alongside the train (that one on the front page of The Telegraph last Friday) are all over the newspapers and television. And Pakistan and India getting into a word of wars again.

You think it`s just the scale of the horror of the incident that makes the media jump on it so happily? I think thats just a part of it.

Now, think Nithari. Another feast that the media has had in recent times, despite the news of the missing children coming out very late. What made it easy meat? Missing children? Skeletons? Crying moms? May be all of that, but looking closer, I see something common: An easy villain.

Almost every news report related to Nithari had Moninder Singh`s photo with it. And for ?us? on this side, there is an ?easy villain? in ISI every time any act of terror happens in this country. This time it wasn`t so easy, as most of the people who died were Pakistanis. Still the media is playing that ?Pak hand? card, though in a more subtle way.

Here`s another story that had both missing children and people continuously living in fear. And yes, it has crying Mothers too.

Families of missing people from Jammu and Kashmir were on a day-long hunger strike last Thursday (February 22) in New Delhi. I heard this from a journalist friend in Delhi on Thursday. I try Googling the next day but could not find anything on it in our leading ?National? newspapers. The only news article I could find on this is from Greater Kashmir, that calls it a ?part of a campaign to mobilise public support against human rights violations in the strife-torn state.?

?Sixty family members of the missing people, mostly women, arrived here [Delhi] on Monday from Srinagar in a bus to participate in the campaign?, goes the news.

The false encounter killings in Kashmir came to news again recently, with former Superintendent of Police Hansraj Parihar and his deputy in Ganderbal, Bhadur Ram, arrested for allegedly killing five south Kashmir villagers in fake encounters after dubbing them as Pakistani militants, apparently for reward money and promotions. I had read that news at a couple of places in print but all I could find now with Google was a single Indian Express article: ?There is a man who says his brother, a Special Police official, was picked up from home, tortured to death and to hide the truth...?

Then a Kashmir Observer article about a protest strike in Kashmir. And a statement in Peoples Democracy. Is there a filter working inside Google India like, say, the one in China? I am not sure.

Sudeep K S
Mumbai
February 28, 07

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