Sreenivasan Jain Vs Niti Central

In case you haven’t already read the previous post ‘NDTV & Tehelka – Faking Limits’ I recommend you do. This is because this post concerns the programmes aired by NDTV on June 27 on the Ishrat Jehan encounter case. The entire 90 minutes (30 in the afternoon and 60 at night) of the programming rests on some CBI papers of “Black beard-White beard” that NDTV claimed proved Narendra Modi and Amit Shah had advance information of the encounter. I just call it the “Beard story”.

The MSM is now getting frequently rattled by articles scrutinising their shows like a surgeon. Sreenivasan Jain of NDTV is upset. Very very upset! He was the one who aired the “beard” stories. In response to his show Kartikeya Tanna at NitiCentral criticised some of the points raised by Jain. A critical part of Tanna’s article (which was also mentioned in my previous post) reads as under:

Journalistic incompetence or predetermined mind?

Firstly, in the report (at 5:25), he (Jain) actually says that the High Court has already established the Ishrat encounter as fake. One wonders what is left for the CBI and the courts to do! In fact, only around two weeks ago, when the CBI obsessed over the LeT links of the dead, the High Cpurt told it to focus on whether the encounter was fake. Whether this is pure journalistic incompetence or a predetermined mind, I would let readers decide.

That’s right if the High Court had already established Ishrat’s encounter was “fake” there’s not much left to do for the CBI and the courts except for the guilty to be sentenced. This claim that the court had already established the encounter was fake is damaging to Jain’s case and he makes it the principal point of a lengthy rebuttal to Niti Central. Here’s a pic as an excerpt from that rebuttal:

Aha, why am I posting an image instead of just quoting Jain? Well, you see pages have this nasty habit of disappearing from NDTV’s website or contents get altered. So what you see in the pic was what it was at 9.13pm on June 29. Jain’s claim that HC had accepted it as a fake encounter appeared at 5.25 in the video posted at NDTV website per Tanna (which Jain refers to as 5.30). So Jain uses “perhaps” and says he heard the discussion at the counter indicated by Tanna but couldn’t find it there. Amazing! The link that Tanna provides in his article for the 5.25 reference and which Jain now refers to both lead to this LINK of the report. Voila! The video is a report by anchor Kajori Sen (who wasn't anchoring the original show) and shows Jain reporting on the case. There’s just one problem with the video as this image shows:

Note carefully, in the above pic of the video the timestamp is June 27, 19.03 and the length is only 3.30 mins. Now why in the world would Tanna be stupid enough to point at a counter at 5.25 when the video itself only 3.30? And Jain in his rebuttal points to this same video and claims he has heard it and finds he hasn’t claimed HC had accepted the “fake” stuff. Mystery! Well Jain may have the “original” video which has simply DISAPPEARD from the NDTV website. That original “Beard story” was a full length half hour programme on June 27 around 3.30pm of around 25 minutes. That video has conveniently disappeared from NDTV’s site and replaced by this video of 3.30mins. Now even the link provided in the Niti Central article naturally leads to this wrong video.

So what was in the video of the Beard-story that aired at around 3.30pm on June 27? Well, I had watched it and I guarantee that Tanna has correctly quoted Jain claiming HC accepting the encounter was fake. On the left is a tweet that Jain sent at 3.29pm on June 27 just claiming his “breaking news” on the Beard-story. So what happened in that afternoon show of June 27? Well, since the video has disappeared I reproduce below few facts from it from my memory. And I assure you, this cannot be disputed by NDTV. So here it goes:

1) Around 3.30pm on June 27 Sreenivasan Jain broke the Beard-story about Modi and Shah being aware of the encounter prior to the incident. This because NDTV “accessed” some CBI papers. 2) Jain was reporting from the studio and had his reporter Rohit Bhan joining in from Ahmedabad. 3) I recall a female reporter from Mumbai adding sound-bites but I am not sure so we will let this one pass. 4) The two main participants on Jain’s show in the afternoon were Jaynarayan Vyas of the BJP and Vrinda Grover, the lawyer for Ishrat’s family.

5) From the beginning of the show Jain was kicking and screaming at Vyas about the new evidence and Vyas fumbled for answers at this sudden badgering. It was at this point that Vyas offered a reason that the matter was still before the High Court.. and Srinivasan instantly responded by saying the High Court had already accepted the encounter was fake. This is what happened at 5.25 in the programme as mentioned by Tanna. As for Vrinda Grover she was just screaming angrily she’s not a Congress agent and the case is not manipulated by Congress and this shouldn’t be made a Congress-BJP fight. For good measure she also screamed that there is a whole lot of anti-Muslim sentiment that led to such “fake” encounters. There was nothing more of substance in that show.

That is the crux of the problem that makes the rebuttal of Jain hollow and unacceptable. Because the video of the afternoon show has been conveniently removed by NDTV. I do not know Kartikeya Tanna or anyone at Niti Central. But having read Tanna’s past articles I can vouch that he places great value on facts, avoids distortion and writes his stuff in a very measured tone.

In this case Jain is wrong and he should put up the full video of his afternoon shown on June 27 which will conclusively establish Tanna is absolutely right in his observation. Period! Now then, after posting his rebuttal at 9.13 pm on June 29, Jain grandly claims in a tweet at 9.21pm “Chapter closed”. Well dear Sreenivasan, chapter is not closed unless you reload the original video from the afternoon of June 27 for the public to see the truth. NDTV dropped its original tagline “Experience truth first” a long time back and Jain should figure out why. Having watched that afternoon show myself I stand by Kartikeya Tanna’s article and his observations. Based on the above, in ‘Sreenivasan Jain V Niti Central’ you decide.