Kashmiri media guilty of propagating one-sided news to create controversy
By Raqib Hameed Naik, TwoCircles.net,
Kanpur/Srinagar: It started as just another brawl between two groups of students earlier on Monday, March 23. Location: The residential campus of the Maharana Pratap Group of Institutions (MPGI), Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh. Students involved were from Uttar Pradesh and Jammu and Kashmir, especially the Kashmir valley.
But the way it was perceived and projected by Kanpur/UP local students, Kashmiri students; Kanpur media and the Kashmiri media; Kashmir police and the local police – a very basic question pops up for an onlooker: Are they all talking about the same incident? What is the truth?
The incident and the different angles:
Gaurav, part of the management team of the College/Institutions, told TwoCircles.net: It was a typical hostel kind of brawl between B Tech students Mohammad Ishfaq, a Kashmiri, and Sourabh Singh, of UP domicile, over the use of comb, which led to a verbal spat. The warden of the college came, clarified and neutralised the things.
“But when Dilawar Ahmad Lone, another Kashmiri, BDS student of the varsity, came to know about the incident from Mohammad Ishfaq, he along with his friend Arvind Yadav and 25 other friends, charged to the B Tech Hostel, where a fight ensued,” he said.
B Tech students were playing cricket and jumped into the fight with wickets and stumps. “There was just one injured, a student named Nilesh from BDS course, and a few others sustained very minor injuries,” Gaurav claimed. The student had lodged an FIR. Police landed at the campus.
Most of the local editions of major Hindi newspapers in Kanpur chose to ignore the news. Urdu newspapers such as Roznama Sahara, Sahafat, Anwar-e-qaum and Inquilab too did not carry any news. The only one to report on Tuesday, March 24 was Kanpur edition of Dainik Jagran. It carried the news as a routine news story about a clash between two groups: BDS and B Tech students. It mentioned the reason for the brawl as – बीटेक और बीडीएस के छात्रों के बीच विवाद एक लड़की को लेकर हुआ। – due to a girl (as in, a girl was the cause of the clash between two groups). It, however, did not elaborate it. The ‘girl’ angle, later turned out, was wrong.
Next day, on March 25, the same newspaper carried a follow up and continued to portray it as a routine college brawl type of news. However, this time round, there was no mention of ‘the girl’ as the cause of dispute.
Dainik Jagran reported that after the brawl on Monday wherein Nileshdhar Dwivedi, Murtaza and Irfaan were injured, students of B Tech and BDS courses came face to face on Tuesday again and shouted slogans. The tension prompted the local police officer to stay put at the college premises. “BDS students told police that they were just 300 against a far larger number of students pursuing B Tech and hence the latter beat up the former group every now and then. The college remained closed for two days as the simmering tension continued,” the Jagran report said.
But in Kashmir, all hell broke loose on Monday and Tuesday, when a number of Kashmiri news websites and portals carried this news about how some Kashmiri students studying at a Kanpur college were beaten up by local students there.
If Kashmiri news portals are to be believed, the Kashmiri students of Maharana Pratap Group of Institutions, Kanpur called Jammu & Kashmir police and forwarded a complaint alleging thrashing by local students at Kanpur. The complaint was forwarded by J&K police to Dr R S Rathore, director, CVO Vigilance, New Delhi for taking up the matter with college authorities, they claimed.
These reports were ostensibly based on a phone call made to the police control room (PCR) Srinagar by Dilawar Ahmad Lone from Kanpur. Lone had called the recently launched 24X7 ‘Helpline for Kashmiri Students’ studying outside the valley. The calls made to this helpline are received by PCR Srinagar.
Lone told the Duty Officer of PCR Srinagar that they (students) were beaten and thrashed due to “regional indifferences.” Two Kashmiri students – named Irfan Ahmad Bhat from Pulwama, Kashmir and Murtaza Bhat from Sopore, Kashmir – were injured. PCR Srinagar informed the SHO concerned and SSP Mandhana, Kanpur.
A report was carried by Greater Kashmir late on Monday, March 23 with a title ‘Kashmiri students heckled, attacked in Kanpur’ which claimed, “Dozens of Kashmiri students were allegedly beaten up by a group of local students at a private college in Kanpur.”
It claimed three students were injured and admitted to a local hospital.
On Tuesday, March 24, JANDK Now, yet another portal, reported how “Jammu and Kashmir police on Tuesday said that they have taken cognizance of the alleged thrashing of Kashmiri students at their college in Indian city of Kanpur” and how “the police had forwarded the complaint to Director and CVO Vigilance that was lodged by Kashmiri students about the ‘manhandling’ incident in their college at Kanpur on Monday.”
In a report titled ‘Kashmiri students ring JKP helpline after beaten up in Kanpur’, the portal Kashmir Dispatch quoted local police statement and wrote how the police on Tuesday said “they had taken up the harassment issue of Kashmiri students by locals at Khanpur (sic) College with the concerned police authorities (sic)” and how “The police party of concerned police station in Khanpur visited the spot (sic) and is looking into the matter. Police Control Room is in constant touch with Kanpur police regarding the matter.”
Thus started the blame game
Dr Ashutosh Dwivedi, dean, Maharana Pratap Engineering College, told TCN: “This was a clash which took place on Monday between B Tech and BDS students of the college regarding some personal dispute. It was not at all a clash between Kashmiri and local students. Kashmiri media is presenting the matter in an inappropriate manner.”
TwoCircles.net tried to further investigate the matter and hence spoke with Dilawar Ahmed Lone, the student who had made the call back home.
Incidentally, Lone had told the police control room that two Kashmiri students were injured – TCN confirmed the number with the police officer on duty at PCR who spoke with Lone on Monday – while to Kashmiri newspapers/portals, he had said 12 were injured. But when TCN called him, he claimed seven were injured.
Lone also told a different version of what had happened at the campus on Monday. He also accused the college administration for “telling lies” and “shielding B Tech students.” He maintained that Kashmiri students were harassed and beaten.
But even when he accepted that the clash was between B Tech and BDS students and that it were majority of local students – and not Kashmiris – who were injured in the clash, Lone chose to term the incident as “Kashmiri-versus-Non-Kashmiri” issue.
So, it turns out it were the Kashmiri students at Kanpur who made it a regional issue – Kashmiri versus local. Such brawls and clashes between two groups are a common scenario across colleges, especially in north India. But it seems the atmosphere is so politically surcharged that it easily takes a communal or regional hue.
Media responsibility, the entire episode showed, was at stake, especially in case of Kashmir media groups. In Kanpur, it was just the Dainik Jagran among the major news houses that reported the incident while others simply chose to ignore. The Kashmiri media, it appears, chose not to verify the facts and wrote one-sided reports based on a mere phone call. The Kashmiri media, actually, went overboard crying ‘victim’ for the Kashmiri students.
The reason why the 24X7 Helpline was launched by Jammu and Kashmir government was because it had received a number of complaints about harassments from Kashmiri students studying outside the state. So, the least that the Kashmiri media could have done was to cross-check with the college authorities.
Interestingly, there have been no follow-up stories either in Kashmir media or Kanpur media about the whole episode. Again, the onus was more on the Kashmir media as they had carried the ‘Kashmiri students beaten up’ angle. But no, there was nothing.
Different versions, different angles, different attitudes displayed by various stakeholders, including the media. A simple story about how many and which students were injured in a clash, unfortunately, turned out to be where the truth was injured.
(Kashif-ul Huda, Siddhant Mohan, A Mirsab and M Reyaz contributed for this story)