For all the talk about ‘synergy’, there appears to be very little of it in the India Today group. Back in 2015, the India Today website had carried a report stating that the Saudi Grand Mufti had issued a fatwa essentially allowing starving men to eat their wives. The post went on to inform readers that this particular information isn’t exactly correct and the Mufti in question had denied issuing such a fatwa.

The Today group’s opinion website, DailyO, had back then even run a story on this with the headline stating that the “fake” fatwa had gone viral.

 Cut to 2017, and Aaj Tak is pedalling this so-called fatwa from 2015 as a recent development and news. It posted a story on its Facebook page today titled: ‘Bhookh lagne par mard apni patni ko kha sakta hai, janey aise ajeeb-o-gareeb fatwe.’ (Starving man can eat his wife, learn more about weird fatwas). 

The post has about 900 shares and more than 5,000 reactions. The news of this alleged fatwa seems to date back to April 9, 2015, when an Iranian news channel called Alalam aired a story. While the story was picked up by many news organisations — including Indian media wallahs who woke up to it a little late in October 2015 — the cleric had immediately released a statement denying having issued any such fatwa. Soon, the Saudi media blamed the Iranian media for fabricating the story as no such fatwa could be found on any of the official websites. 

One wonders what prompted Aaj Tak to circulate this dubious piece of information from 2015 in 2017. We’re guessing it’s got very little to do with news sense.