The nation pages of The Indian Express and The Times of India today carried a disturbing story on the death of five Dalit men in a village in Jind, Haryana. According to the reports, the five men belonged to the Dhanak caste of the Scheduled Caste community and died as they climbed down an unused well looking for water.

The village had been battling a severe water crisis – tube wells were beginning to dry up and villagers claim in the reports that the district administration had done nothing to help them. The men died of noxious gas emanating from the well, which had not been used for about five years.

Both IE and TOI led with different headlines. The former went with “Water woes: Five suffocate to death while cleaning well“, while the latter highlighted the fact of the boys being Dalit: “5 Dalits go down abandoned well in search of water, killed by ‘poison gas’“.  Hindustan Times carried the story on its website with the headline: “Haryana: Five die cleaning well in Jind’s Nidana village” and The Tribune went with “Five choke to death while cleaning well“. Apart form TOI, DNA was the only other news publication that identified the men as Dalits in the headline: “Five Dalits choke to death in abandoned Haryana well“.

While the body copy of all reports mention the fact of the men being Dalit, it is worth pondering if the news would have generated more concern and indignation on our part had the headlines stated the fact in bold.