The prospects of breaking a story on Dawood Ibrahim, India’s most-wanted fugitive, gets the media excited like nothing else. So much so that reports on the underworld don ignore basic rules of fact checking, often relying on inputs from unverified sources and social media murmurs.

That is what seemed to have happened over the weekend. On April 28, around 10.40 pm, CNN News18 tweeted: “BREAKING: Dawood unwell and admitted to Karachi hospital; reports suggest of heart stroke, situation critical: Sources tell @manojkumargupta”.  

CNN News18 also tweeted that there was no official announcement from Pakistan because it will put the country in a difficult position. Once again, this information was coming from unnamed sources.

Meanwhile, Bhupendra Chaubey, prime-time anchor with CNN News18, also cited “unconfirmed reports” to state that Dawood Ibrahim “may be dead”.

Within 25 minutes of his initial tweet, Chaubey retweeted it to say, “Unconfirmed. Must point out”.

In a few minutes, CNN News18 issued a “#CORRECTION” stating, “Dawood suffered a heart attack in Karachi. Dawood’s aide Chhota Shakeel says he’s perfectly fine.”

It seemed the situation was not as critical and Dawood may not after all be dead. The channel deleted the first tweet and the report on its website stated that “Ibrahim is in critical condition in Karachi after he suffered a heart attack…” The report also published a denial by Chhota Shakeel.

But 25 minutes is a long time in the virtual world. The news of Dawood’s imminent death had already spread and there was excitement all around. The bit about the unverified reports of a heart attack, and not the subsequent denial by Shakeel, went viral overnight.

From paralysis to brain tumour, counting Dawood’s last breath

News channels were dramatic in their coverage of the story. ABP started a countdown to the last breath of Dawood with their programme, “Dawood ki Antim saans par ABP ki nazar”.

NewsX cited an “unverified report” and asserted that he was on life support after a brain surgery in a Karachi hospital. News24online reported that Dawood is nearly dead. According to their sources, Dawood suffered a major “paralysis attack” as a result of which the right part of his body was completely paralysed. The report added that he was taken to hospital on April 22 for an operation to remove his brain tumour.

Online portals took it a step further. OneIndia.com reported that Dawood had stopped responding to treatment and may be dead after suffering a massive heart attack. Their sources even gave small details like the time he started feeling uneasy to the time doctors were called in and he got admitted to the hospital. Right-wing propaganda site Postcard News made the wild claim that Dawood may have been dead for a year quoting a Right-wing Twitter handle as an authority in the matter. They went on to detail a conspiracy theory that news of his death was suppressed since it would impact his business dealings with the film industry, police and politicians.

Fact checks and a semblance of sanity

While the initial reaction of most was to speculate on the basis of unverified sources quoted in the CNN News18 story and run headlines like, “Is Dawood Ibrahim dead” (Zee News), a few media organisations got down to the basics.

Once an attempt to check facts was made, denial and clarifications began to pour in. The Times of India reached out to Dawood’s close aide, Chhota Shakeel for a confirmation. He dismissed all speculation and told them, “Listening to my voice, do you think any such thing has happened? These are all rumors. Bhai is fit and fine.”  

Hindustan Times was told by its sources that Dawood was neither in the hospital nor was he critical.  He was reportedly unwell and frequently visited a hospital but he was not critical and was seen at Miandad’s party on April 19. DNA spoke to senior police officers in the Mumbai police department who denied having any information about Dawood suffering from a heart attack. Once the initial “news break” had happened, reports focused on confirmed facts rather than speculations.

Interestingly, Zee News blamed the speculation on Dawood’s eminent death on the Pakistani media. “The Pakistani media had on Friday reported that India’s most wanted underworld don was in critical condition in Karachi, Pakistan, triggering speculation that 61-year-old Dawood has died”. This writer could not find any such report in the Pakistani media, at least none online.

It must be recalled that this is not the first time that CNN News 18 has brought us breaking news about Dawood. In April 2016 they reported: “Dawood Ibrahim Crippled By Gangrene. Are His Days Numbered?” At that time, their “sources” had informed the same journalist, Manoj Kumar Gupta, that Dawood is suffering from gangrene, which was at such an advanced stage that soon the doctors will have no option but to amputate his legs. With only a few months left, it was supposed to be #EndGame for Dawood if the sources and the hashtag run by CNN News18 were to be believed. Dawood was seen as recently as April 19, as the recent reports suggest, and there are no reports to indicate that he was crippled by gangrene or that his legs were amputated.

Earlier this year, in January, some sections of the press had gone into a tizzy over unverified reports of Dawood’s assets worth Rs 15,000 crore being seized in the United Arab Emirates. The story was initially reported by Zee News and the official BJP account declared it as a “major diplomatic success of PM Modi”.

The BJP, it seems, was basing this on Zee News’ report and not on government sources. But where did Zee get this story? The ministry of external affairs? No. Officials in UAE? Nope. Zee’s story does not cite a single source yet it took no time to go viral till the Ambassador of UAE dismissed it.

It is worthwhile to note that despite their many “sources”, none in the media have even been able to secure a recent picture of Dawood. The one that all the news stories carried is over 20 years old.

The author can be contacted on Twitter @samjawed65