Delhi's Broken Windows

(This maxi-post is in multiple parts but carried on single page)

From the poorest family in a slum to the richest in mansions, all Indian families share a common practice; we clean our house every single day. There can be those rare days which are exceptions but we do sweep and mop the floor every single day. We do this routine in our offices too. This is one of the routines of our lives as with other hygiene ones. It’s one thing common between the rich and the poor. If we don’t, dust accumulates. If dust accumulates disease follows or possessions rot. As simple as that! Crime prevention is not very different. Keeping cities free of crime is a daily routine. And when crime does happen we expect justice will follow and swiftly. The recent incident of the Gangrape of a 23-year old woman and her death brought people out on to the streets. The response of the govt and police merely indicate that they aren’t following the daily routines. Lathi-charges, water-cannons, shutting down metro-rail, buses and barricades are all responses in a ‘contagion’. Although this Gangrape acted as a trigger people weren’t really out in anger for that alone. Delhizens are simply fed up to their necks with the frequent crimes in the city-state. This is a long story, in multiple parts, and not to do with the media alone.

The ‘moment of truth’ as I call it is when a guest or visitor first comes in contact with a city or a service. When a flight is cancelled or delayed beyond tolerance, irate passengers don’t call up the Chairman of the airline to scream at; do they?  They usually crowd around the hapless check-in girl and give her a harrowing time (see image and also see video on Youtube). The poor girl has absolutely nothing to do with the aircraft, cancellation, delays or flights except checking you in. Yet, she is the one facing the brunt of public anger. She is the ‘window’ of the airline. She is the ‘moment of truth’, the first point of contact. For most visitors to Delhi that first moment of truth or point of contact is a Taxi or an Auto. The behaviour of some of them is quite uncivil and makes you feel unwelcome. To top it all they don’t run on meters even till this day; 65 years after independence. Isn’t it astonishing, that those who claim to be in charge of law and order, crime-prevention and justice haven’t managed to get taxis and autos run on simple meters? Why in the world should Delhi airport have a system of ‘prepaid’ fares for yellow taxis which should just flag down their meters? This is true for all metros with the exception of Mumbai and for most other large cities in India. Lately, private taxis run on meters and even issue receipts. Crime doesn’t start with tragic rape and murder cases. It starts with failure in daily house-keeping.

As frequent as eve-teasing has been in Delhi, this daily hygiene issue doesn’t seem to be getting the daily treatment in requires. In buses or on the streets, a woman being teased or molested doesn’t seem to be seen as a symptom. Like that poor airline check-in girl who is your first point of contact? Yeah, he’s the nearest cop on the street or at the police station. The lowest one in the rank! Do you want to meet this cop in your worst nightmare? Most people dread the experience and contact a policeman only in very compelling circumstances. If eve-teasing is allowed to pass, it becomes the dust that gathers into a contagion called rape. This poor cop, like the check-in girl, is the lowest rung of the ladder, the Police Commissioner is the lowest rung in the political order and currently the PM and the ministers are the lowest rung of the dynastic order. The same poor cop faces the brunt of public ire during protests. One of them collapsed and died. The pic of PM and his ministers lining up for a guard of honour usually reserved for PMs, Presidents or State-Heads says a lot. And where are you, the people? We are the lowest fish in the whole food chain. Ironically, you should be the BOSS! You are the ones who either vote these people and/or pay their salaries. Yet, you are in a system where you, as the customer, come last.

In Bangalore autos have a picture of the driver, his license details in a large enough frame behind the driver’s seat. It’s something every passenger can read and note and lodge a complaint if the driver breaks traffic rules, cheats or is lawless. It also tell you whether the license is valid and whether the real, licensed driver is the behind the wheel and not a proxy. Now, does that take some extraordinary intelligence or judicial panel to do? We don’t find this in Delhi or many other cities. Why should Delhi autos or taxis which don’t run on meters be on the streets? Why shouldn’t drivers of such vehicles have a deterrent of 5-10 years in prison if they don’t follow rules? Nothing! Unfortunately, it is one such bus which wasn’t street-worthy, which wasn’t licensed to be on the streets in which this terrible Gangrape happened. It’s that window through which the criminals sneaked in. That window wasn’t fixed.

The Broken Window

(This is an edited extract from the Wiki article about fighting crime through the theory of ‘Broken Window’ and how quickly it needs to be fixed). The broken windows theory was first introduced by social scientists James Q. Wilson and George L. Kelling, in an article titled "Broken Windows" and which appeared in the March 1982 edition of The Atlantic Monthly. The title comes from the following example:

Consider a building with a few broken windows. If the windows are not repaired, the tendency is for vandals to break a few more windows. Eventually, they may even break into the building, and if it's unoccupied, perhaps become squatters or light fires inside. Or consider a sidewalk. Some litter accumulates. Soon, more litter accumulates. Eventually, people even start leaving bags of trash from take-out restaurants there or even break into cars. Before the introduction of this, Philip Zimbardo, a Stanford psychologist, arranged an experiment testing the broken-window theory in 1969. Zimbardo arranged for an automobile with no license plates and the hood up to be parked idle in a Bronx neighbourhood (in New York City) and a second automobile in the same condition to be set up in Palo Alto, California.

The car in the Bronx was attacked by "vandals" within minutes of its "abandonment". Zimbardo noted that the first "vandals" to arrive was a family – a father, mother and a young son – who removed the radiator and battery. Within twenty four hours of its abandonment, everything of value had been stripped from the vehicle. After that, the car's windows were smashed in, parts torn, upholstery ripped, and children were using the car as a playground. At the same time, the vehicle sitting idle in Palo Alto, California sat untouched for more than a week. Then Zimbardo himself went up to the vehicle and deliberately smashed it with a sledgehammer. Soon after, people joined in for the destruction. It is believed that in a neighborhood such as the Bronx where the history of abandoned property and theft are more prevalent, vandalism occurs much more quickly as the community gives off a "no one cares" vibe. Similar events can occur in any civilized community when social barriers – the sense of mutual regard and obligations of civility – are lowered by actions that suggests "no one cares"

Broken Windows In Our Society

The theory of broken windows above quite explains the phenomenon of the crime culture in Delhi and neighbouring states. Ask yourself a question. If you leave your car in a public place in Delhi and another one in a public place in Ahmedabad, where do you think chances of it being stolen are higher? Anyone can easily guess. Rudy Guiliani and his police chiefs partly used the ‘broken window’ theory and test to fight crime in New York. Guiliani was successful in dramatically reducing crime in NY. How? He didn’t stop with thugs and Mafia-gangs; he also dealt with small offences like graffiti on public walls. Some crimes affect ordinary people directly some don’t. Insecurity in public places affects all. This is the reason Delhizens came out in numbers to protest. At the same time, not only Delhizens but people in many other cities in India do not demand performance from public service operators. The little auto mostly operates on a meter in Mumbai, Ahmedabad and Bangalore. In Chennai the auto driver may run the meter but will have a pre-condition: “20 rupees extra Saar”. Now, that 20 extra varies, depending on the distance you travel. Auto drivers suddenly turn into crooks at most railway and bus stations in India. Some years ago when I was in Kolkatta, even the fully depreciated, run down Trams had two classes: first and second. I couldn’t really tell the difference between the two.

In Delhi it’s not just the public transport but every sphere of public life, be it medical shops, small restaurants, hotels, police stations, govt departments you will find it. Delhi also has the reputation of producing the most number of duplicates of branded products and even pirated IP products. There was a joke once that a Delhi trader was an outcast if he hadn’t bounced at least one cheque in a month. Encroachments, land smuggling, illegal extensions are all crimes and windows that are broken every single day in our cities. Rapes and murders are just a lot more dramatic; some more brutal than the others. Not surprisingly, when 9/11 happened, Rudy Guiliani was among the first-responders. He was with his people and his city. He was managing fire fighters on the ground and also talking to his citizens directly and through TV. In contrast, what did our leaders in Delhi do? They were mostly on TV and some were the ‘last responders’. Having gotten nowhere with justice for 26/11 (except for hanging the captured Kasab) our govt is now playing Cricket with Pakistan. That says a lot, doesn’t it?

Sheila Dikshit was tear-jerking on TV. Sushil Kumar Shinde was explaining why it makes no sense to meet protesters. Sonia Gandhi meets hand-picked ‘honey-bunnies’ in private. The PM makes a limp statement on TV days later to a comic finish with ‘Theek Hai’. Rahul Gandhi, the Congress party’s super-hero future PM, is the last responder with a typical text-book statement. And Oh, who was the first one with the soundbites? Of course, the intellectual bank of the party, Renuka Chaudhary. She was telling the world rapists shouldn’t be allowed to open bank accounts and shouldn’t be given insurance policies. I suppose banks and insurance companies can easily tell which customer is a potential rapist before opening an account. There are other MPs who found protesting women to be “dented and painted” and media morons who found “lumpens” among them.

And our media? Oh they get all types to give us a running commentary with strange people. They even bring in Bollywood divas. Shabana Azmi was on TV from 6am in the morning on December 29 till about 10 in the night. The most pathetic and filthy response was, obviously, from the filthy ubiquitous Bollywood spokesman in the media, Mahesh Bhatt. He wants temples to be shut down. This comes from a man who regularly produces soft-porn movies and lip-kisses his own daughter. This is the broken window in Bollywood and our media. The response of Kartikeya Tanna (who often writes for FirstPost) quite sums up Bhatt’s stupidity. Even in a tragic crime of rape and murder Mahesh Bhatt spews hatred for Hindu culture or religion. And these are the guttermouths leading protests. You know where security and justice is headed.

Duct-Taping Broken Windows

On the night of December 27, Thursday the Delhi govt suddenly decided to shift the rape victim to Singapore for better treatment. The news broke around midnight and naturally people were suspicious. The woman was critical all through and chances of survival seemed thin. So it was indeed surprising why such a decision was taken. The media was cleared from the Safdurjang hospital. However, around midnight only one media celeb was allowed to report from the hospital area; not hard to guess who. There are now reports that the victim was in an irreversible coma and I personally believe doctors may not have given her long to survive. It just seems the govt didn’t want her to die on their “turf”. That would have turned a calamity into a complete disaster. So they shipped her off to Singapore, brought her dead body back and cremated her quietly in a hush-hush manner. These tweets from Minhaz Merchant, a media consultant and regular columnist, say it all. Instead of handling the truth and showing the courage to face people with reality, our govt was fixing the broken window with duct-tape. How long will that Band-Aid last?

The only person I could see who made any sense in the clutter was Harish Salve, the noted lawyer. He mentioned strongly that there was no need for new laws but that laws simply needed implementation and justice delivered faster. He stated that the punishments need to be the fullest under the law. The media even got former president Pratibha Patil to lament. She is the one who commuted the death sentence of around 35 criminals, some of whom were sentenced to death for rape and murder. Some of their victims were as young as 5-6 year old girls. The police rounded up the rapists in the current case within 48 hours. Compare with Durai Dayanidhi who was absconding for months in a Granite scam case before a court granted him bail. He mysteriously surfaced after he got bail. Compare the Gopal Kanda airhostess suicide case where a witness has jumped bail and disappeared. The political parties are yet to sack any of their MPs/MLAs who have rape or murder cases against them to prove to the people they are willing to act. RPN Singh, the very honourable minister, stated GOI will create a database of rape convicts. I wonder what he will do with it. Aren’t rape convicts anyway supposed to be in jail? All it needs is to sentence for longer terms or to death, if there is murder as well.

Sheila Dikshit blamed immigrants for increased crime in Delhi. P. Chidambaram had made a similar comment in the past. Whether immigrants or not, how they license buses and drivers is Delhi’s own turf. This is not a question of law or making more laws. It’s about really turning public servants to ACT as public servants. They need to do the daily sweeping and mopping to clean the dust. Windows will be broken every day and will need to be fixed every single day. Every politician in the govt who spoke after the Gangrape has shown absolutely no real intelligence on how they are going to clean up Delhi. Nothing! Except for changing the distress call number to 181, which was reportedly busy during a mishap this morning. This is also true for other cities and not Delhi alone. Carried away with all the attention and TRP-getting shows, the media too won’t honestly assess the crime situation. None even protested Manish Tiwari’s threat to curb telecast of the protests. A govt that has been too busy with scams and at election-time dishes out the regular doles is not going to fix much. Duct-taping can only hold for a while. Appeasement of Some and justice for None!

Rattled Barkha Plays Victim ...

It’s OK to string along a source; journalists are SOBs (sons of bitches), so that’s fine. Hold it, not so fast! Don’t draw your guns yet. That wasn’t me; that was Shekhar Gupta, a regular feature on NDTV. Read the last part in this earlier post. Any idea what Gupta was referring to? Umm… he was referring to Radiagate and journalists caught on tapes. Lately, NDTV’s Group Editor Barkha Dutt (BD) has been rattled by a few articles and a few tweets. She has been lampooned for calling the Delhi protesters over the Gangrape incident “Lumpens” and then messing around with unreliable information in the case of Constable Subhash Tomar. A day ago she was again ridiculed for her tweets disclosing the hospital and destination for medical treatment of the victim in Singapore. Not much wrong there except that they questioned why she supported so much privacy for someone else.

This site has regularly and frequently exposed the hypocrisy of BD and her double-speak as also of other media celebs and news outlets. It has also pointed out her highly politicised journalism and tweets far more often than any other site. Do read these if you haven’t already: “Evolving the Gandhi”, “Delhi Protests: Lumpens in media”, “Roman Agent in Gujarat” and “Gangrape,Subhash Tomar & Monkey-fisted media”. The latest ones seem to have upset her. Not just these posts but certain tweets also seem to have upset her. Naturally, BD seems to be itching to get back at MediaCrooks (MC). Only, she has nothing to get back with except more rubbish and more nonsense that has been her traditional style. You see, she’s been having a bad week. Narendra Modi won Gujarat again and her tweets, as also poor journalism at NDTV, are being exposed. After the recent posts I mentioned, some others weren’t so kind to her either. Here’s how it started.

Aditi Mittal started it off on December 27 with the humorous tweet above. Barkha’s twitter friends pointed it out and BD was upset (which she mostly is). Shiv Aroor of Headlines Today seems to have RT’d it and that had BD fuming. Seems some of BD’s fans were upset too, they called it “slander”. That should tell you how intelligent some of BD’s followers are. BD reacted as if Shiv was the one who was cracking the jokes and wasn’t the first time she had heard about him doing so. Shiv pointed out to her that Aditi was a stand-up comic (as her profile says) and is bound to crack jokes at public figures and celebrities. Poor BD couldn’t tolerate it. You see, BD wants that only she should have the privilege of making silly tweets all to herself. Maybe UPA will pass a law for her on that. With the Delhi Gangrape and the idiotic comments of Abhijit Mukherjee (“Dented & Painted women”) in the news BD thought the best way to escape from her series of bad tweets and judgements was to play “victim” by claiming to be abused because she’s a woman. That’s a regular routine, isn’t it?

Early morning on December 28 she sends out this tweet quoting the tag “BarkhaTheBitch” and sarcastically asking if these were the “new gender rights crusaders”. I’m not sure she asked the same question to her friend and frequent guest on NDTV, Shekhar Gupta, who called all journalists “bitches” in the context of Radiagate. Never mind! But BD doesn’t show the original tweet as ‘RT’ but quotes it so that it could be misinterpreted by her fans of the ‘dumb category’. And they respond true to form. Before you know they are all tweeting and RTing as if MC had called her a “bitch”. And being called so upsets her tremendously and some try to pin it on MediaCrooks! In the post about Barkha calling protesters against the Delhi Gangrape “Lumpens”, it’s not just ordinary folks but even an independent journalist Andrew Buncombe couldn’t help noticing NDTV’s nonsense. In the case of her tweets on the rape victim being shifted to a hospital abroad even NYT’s IndiaInk couldn’t help recording her silly tweet and a response to it.

Along with other fans of BD, a guy called @Sarfystweets consoles her and sends out tweets to everyone implying MC called Barkha a “bitch”. Haha! And poor BD is thrilled to bits. She thanks @Sarfystweets and wants to know if MC has guts to reveal his identity and that she will then “talk”. Ahem! Guts? Talk? BD has TV, Twitter and even has Hindustan Times to rant with, so I wonder what she wants to talk about. Anyway, one of her former colleagues from NDTV once made the same mistake of calling MC an “Anonymous, unreachable terrorist”. He had to eat crow. He learned that there is no secrecy except in the minds of those who are rattled and want to play victim, like BD does. And even that victimhood is fake and based on peddling tweets to read differently from what they really are. (If I have not posted the tweet of Sarfystweets here it’s because the idiotic tweet actually contains inadvertent, unintended ridicule of Barkha).

Here’s the actual tweet. I had tweeted the post about Barkha calling protesters “Lumpens” in conjunction with Abhijit Mukherjee calling women “dented and painted”. The tweet gets RT’d and circulated and people respond in their own way. Someone called @Dlazyone tweets and calls BD “BarkhaTheBitch”. He just happened to tweet to someone else and tagged my handle in the tweet. But Dlazyone doesn’t write about Barkha or the media and doesn’t criticise them that I know of. The one who is scathing, sarcastic, ridicules and pokes fun at the moronery of our media celebs is MediaCrooks. So BD thought it was best to let people imagine that the tweet was originated by me and that she had the chance to play the great wounded victim. FAIL! Even when someone as stupid as Sarfystweets responded to her she didn’t bother to correct him. That’s the kind of dumb fan BD likes. Now you know where her so-called communication skills and “independent-minded” journalism come from. Pathetic!

That’s Barkha for you! Wallowing in self-pity! For all her concern for women and woman-hood BD didn’t have much to say about Abhijit Mukherjee’s comment about “Dented & Painted protesting women”. I guess it’s probably very inconvenient to the Congress party and to Barkha. On most other times Barkha would have screamed “let’s not politicise this” and condemned the man. Oh Yeah! Let’s not politicise Mukherjee’s idiotic rant. So what does Barkha do? Instead of unconditionally and clearly condemning Mukherjee, she pulls out a comment of Sharad Yadav to equate it with Mukherjee's. That’s how we avoid politicising attacks on womanhood, right? Like I said in an earlier post, the social media is unforgiving. People on Twitter point out idiocy and “idionaires” faster than BD can say “Bitch”! She’s not the only one; you will find similar tweets from many other media celebs trying to create equivalence. Frankly, I don’t need to use abusive language for our media celebs, there is enough other weaponry and ammunition. Er… Who provides those? Of course, Barkha herself and her MSM community!

Is that all? Nope! Last September a prominent journalist RT’d one of my posts concerning Barkha. Sure enough, Barkha’s crony friends jumped on her like a pack of hyenas. Her crony friends called me names. I chose not to respond then. But guess what! One of Barkha’s good friends (a senior citizen) and someone who fondly admires her rejected the nonsense churned out by her and her friends in a tweet of his. Truth is hard to reject, even by people who aren’t on your side. We will save that story for another time when Barkha decides to play victim again. 

Gangrape, Subhash Tomar & Monkey-Fisted Media

Monkeys are usually known to be intelligent creatures. That is, except when they’re hungry or greedy. In the old days they would trap a monkey with a cage containing a banana with a hole large enough for a monkey's hand to fit in, but not large enough for a monkey's fist (clutching the banana) to pull out. These were used to trap and catch monkeys that lack the intellect to let go of the banana. After the Delhi Gang-rape incident, there were monkeys trapped everywhere; some from the GOI, some from the Delhi govt and some from the Delhi Police. Nothing unusual about that, govts and police are often caught in monkey-traps of their own making. The Gang-rape, the protests and the death of Constable Subhash Tomar had everyone trapped. Some from the media were trapped in a different monkey-trap; Twitter and Social Media. They never learn! They never learn that Twitter and Social Media are made up of unforgiving people with REM. That’s Random Excess Memory. The monkey in the pic is probably asking a friend “Oh God, how do I pull out of this one”?

The media always expects people will forget but that doesn’t happen in social media. The monkeys keep making the same mistake. Before the current series of incidents over the Gang-rape we have had quite a few incidents this year. There was the Guwahati molestation case with some channels airing videos without blurring some images. There was the Assam riot and killings when Rajdeep Sardesai fell into the monkey trap of tyranny of distance, of deaths being lower than Gujarat and lack of OB vans. Rajdeep did apologise and, to his credit, both he and his channel have done a lot better in handling the present crises. Following that we had the Azad Maidan protests by secular and civilised people. And yes, we had the exodus of North-East people from Pune, Hyderabad and Bangalore. The Bangalore exodus peaked, of all days, on Independence-Day. Fond memories, eh?

During the Bangalore exodus most of us relied on tweets from the ground, from the railway stations. The media, of course, didn’t have a clue what was going on. During that episode the Karnataka Home Minister even rushed to the station to pacify people who were fleeing out of fear unlike the present crisis where ministers were floating on media channels. So in steps our heroine to warn us all idiots. These two tweets from Barkha Dutt are Gyaan from the upper most peaks of the Himalayas. First she says “Think”! Think before you use words and don’t add to rumours. Ahem! You need to be “propah” at all times on your choice of words. Did you learn? In the next one she says “please do not add to the panic and rumours, let’s be assuring, calm and sane”. Did you get it? You see, nobody learns, least of all Barkha. Having dipped her hand in that crisis she went on a tweet-spree that night. She tweeted about Union Ministers calling the Karnataka CM, that there was no exodus, Assamese were going on vacation, that all that was rumour-mongering. Truth is she didn’t really appear to have any facts at all.

Facts? Did someone mention facts? Oops! Only a few people have a monopoly on facts. Don’t they? Barkha believes she is one of them.  She doesn’t allow ‘imagination’ to interfere with her reporting or tweeting, does she? It’s a small matter, though, that her nonsense about “Lumpens among protesters” was demolished and her hypocrisy exposed in my earlier post. But following the discussion of lumpens, the next day there were indeed some lumpen elements deputed to the venue of protests. They managed to ignite violence, damage property and cause injuries. Nobody is in doubt which group these lumpens belonged to and which political party may have engaged them. It is after this round of violence (On December 24) that we heard about a Constable being killed in the violence.

Victory to GOI! Now that there was violence and somebody had been killed, the govt had the moral ground to state that the protests had been hijacked by political elements. Oh! Not just the govt, even NDTV headlined “Student protests hijacked by violence”. Who reported the constable first? Oh yeah! It was Barkha Dutt. She tweeted that a constable (Subhash Tomar) had died as a consequence of the violence. Fact? Fact-checked? Nope! So Barkha deletes that tweet and a while later tweets that the constable was critically injured and taken to hospital. Remember, she is careful in her choice of words; she is avoiding rumours and trying not to create panic and maintain sanity. Just like her Bangalore episode, right? Following her tweet, her channel also picks up her news-feed and keeps shouting “Cop critically injured” by protesters. Truth is: Not one media house or reporter, least of all Barkha, had any shred of evidence that the cop was injured by protesters. This is how the monkey traps itself. And having trapped itself it can’t let go of the banana. Read this post by SudhirKumar on the whole episode and these storified-tweets of media actors by BarbarIndian on the callous and unprofessional reporting by them.

On the morning of December 25, the constable, Subhash Tomar was reported dead around 6.30am. Suddenly, the govt announced a state funeral. Imagine death, post-mortem, organising police groups from protest sites can all be time consuming tasks. But hey, our govt and Delhi police are so hyper efficient they managed it all and by 4pm in the afternoon Subhash Tomar was cremated with full state honours. Believable? They just didn’t imagine someone else will turn up with a story. An eyewitness! Yogendra Tomar (in pic), a journalism student of BR Ambedkar College, who was also involved in protests but returning from a hospital saw Subhash Tomar collapsing. So he and another injured protester (returning from head injury treatment), Paolin, helped the constable and tried to revive him. Two other cops were with them. By evening on Dec.25, after Subhash was cremated, Yogendra was on many TV channels, including NDTV-Hindi, giving his version of events. He confirmed nobody attacked Subhash and he collapsed while running. The lady who was helping, Paolin, confirmed his story. Now take a look at this picture (The video is also available on Youtube):

What do you see? We can see Subhash lying on the ground, two cops and the two eye-witnesses trying to help revive him. The cop’s shoe has been removed. There’s a bystander in the left pic. Clear enough! Now, observe closely. There’s some smoke (probably tear gas) about an estimated 300 metres from this group. That seems to be some conflict in progress. But look around Subhash and the group. Does it look like it was a conflict zone? There are no broken items like bangles, watches or spectacles. There are no visible drops of blood anywhere. No pools of water or plastic water bottles. There are no stones or rocks around the cop. There are no shoes or slippers strewn around like you would find in a conflict zone. No blunt objects (with which the media claims Subhash was attacked with). No tear gas shells. There’s nothing! Even the Youtube video I mentioned above only shows some mild debris strewn around. Some may be regular stuff on the streets that you find and some may be from a minor clash at the most. Paolin also told CNN-IBN that when the shirt of Subhash was opened there were no injuries on his chest but it was full of sweat. Cold sweat?

Therefore the theory that Subhash fell after being attacked seems pretty dubious. And there is no evidence whatsoever anywhere to indicate it. Also, the body movement, the slouching or falling head of Subhash has not been explained anywhere convincingly. However, during the course of the day on December 26, it did not stop Barkha Dutt from her tweet-spree trying to link the death of Subhash Tomar to various unrelated issues, even in Kashmir to cloud the issue. NDTV and other channels continued to maintain he had died due to injuries sustained on the field. The hospital where Subhash was taken does not mention any external injuries. It is quite amazing that in an attack in a conflict with a mob, a person suffering injuries leading to death can completely escape any external injury. But even without the post-mortem report the police spokesman mentioned yesterday morning that Subhash had chest, stomach and neck injuries and then stated he could make comments only after a post-mortem report. All these conflicting reports only indicate either a massive bungling or a massive cover-up. Last evening, not a single caller on Times Now believed the story dished out by the media or the govt.

For someone who sermonises from the Himalayas, Barkha herself started this whole nonsense of speculation over Subhash Tomar. Her channel then continued to tom-tom the story that Subhash died as a consequence of injuries. They neither had any evidence nor any convincing report to rely on. Barkha didn’t have any fact-checking done either when she tweeted the cop was killed (and she claims few people have the guts for facts only). Or was it that he had already died on the streets when she tweeted? Did her reporter tell her that? Barkha, as is her political persuasion, doesn’t fail to point a finger at the Right Wing over the post-mortem report in her series of tweets. And after all her speculation through tweets she states she won’t tweet anymore about Tomar. Haha! Bravo! Is there anything that she had still left ‘untweeted’?

In all of this what one misses to observe is that collectively, NDTV and similar channels have more or less given a clean-chit to Sheila Dikshit and the Congress for events that happened in Delhi and the crimes that have made it a rape-capital. It’s almost as if Sheila Dikshit is an angel who is now a victim who is complaining like everyone else. It should be clear on hindsight that the media monkey that dipped its hand into the cage got stuck with the banana. Their lies and spins stand exposed once again. Only thing left untweeted is “Mission Accomplished”! Someone led them to that trap and you can guess who. In the meantime, with all the noise about Subhash Tomar, that 23-year old Gang-rape victim has been reduced to another comma in the story.