The verdict of a sessions court in Pathankot on the abduction, rape and murder of a minor girl in Jammu’s Kathua district has sifted the wheat from the chaff from the event’s reportage. There were those who pursued the case with sense and sobriety, and those who chose to cover it with spuriosity and ill-will.

This latter crowd includes those whose reportage were simply not factual; those who tried to hoodwink readers through fatuous “disclaimers”; those who peddled misinformed tales on television, and those who produced fantastical claims on social media.

So here, dear readers, is a false news hall of fame of the Kathua incident:   

Monger: Dainik Jagran

On April 20, 2018, Dainik Jagran flashed a sensational headline on its front page: “Bada khulasa: Kathua ki bachi se nahi hua tha dushkaram (Big expose: Kathua girl was not raped)”.

The article appeared in various North Indian city editions of Jagran: New Delhi, Agra, Aligarh, Allahabad, Amritsar and even Kathua. It was also published in the Jagran group’s Nai Dunia newspaper.

The story was authored by one Advesh Chauhan from Jammu who claimed the eight year-old Bakarwal girl from Kathua was not raped. To make his case, the author cited two post-mortem reports that allegedly mentioned the injuries and not the sexual assault.

The report argued that there could be other reasons for the victim’s injuries: the ruptured hymen, for instance, was because the nomad girl could be engaged in activities like cycling, swimming, horse riding etc; and scratches on the thigh could be a result of a fall. Conveniently, the article omitted other injuries that might indicate sexual assault.

Fact-checking Jagran’s junk science, AltNews produced a written note by the Board of Doctors of the District Hospital Kathua to the Police. It said the victim’s injuries “could be because of any form of sexual assault”.

Unsurprisingly, the misleading story was pulled down from the website around noon that day. Surprisingly, it was revived that evening.

In June 2018, a medical report proved that the victim was subjected to brutal sexual assault.

What reflects Jagran’s bad faith in this entire affair is that it hasn’t yet issued a note on its erroneous reportage.

Coward: The Sunday Guardian

There must have been much gleeful rubbing of hands when the editorial board at The Sunday Guardian struck upon the solution to the ultimate question: how do we circulate false information on the Kathua case without being held responsible for it?

So on April 14, Sushil Pandit’s awkwardly deceitful column Anatomy of a Concoction* was published in the paper under the tag “fake news”. An asterisk was added to circumvent a prospective controversy: “*This article is a pure concoction based on fiction. Any resemblance with any character or event is unintentional and coincidental.” Truly a guardian.

Pandit’s piece churned out three pieces of fiction:

1. The eight-year-old Bakarwal girl was not raped.

2. Her real parents were murdered and she’s apparently inherited property for which she could have been killed by her own relatives.

3. The accused in the case were framed by the Crime Branch.

The first claim is obviously false. So is the second one, since channels interviewed both biological and adoptive parents (see here, here and here). The third claim has zero truth value since six of the eight accused were convicted by the sessions court in Pathankot on June 10. The seventh accused was acquitted given lack of evidence. Three of the six held guilty were convicted for destruction of evidence.

When Newslaundry had reached out to Madhav Das Nalapat, the editorial director of The Sunday Guardian, he justified the column’s deceit by claiming that “Sushil Pandit has the right to pen literature”.  Nalapat spun it as a freedom of expression issue: “As someone who was more than once on the receiving end of having my writing driven off print pages, I would rather err on the side of freedom of expression than its suppression.”

Except Mr Nalapat, you did not err on the side of freedom of expression. You erred on the side of facts. By airing demonstrably false claims in your paper, you first spat on your editorial duty. By cushioning it under “fake news”, you then licked it back. And that’s cowardice.

Mr Pandit’s protective disclaimer, of course, seemed to have been mysteriously lost while on his way to the Republic TV studios, where he repeated some of his claims.

Spinmeisters: Zee News

Zee News is one of the few national channels that serves the people. Sudhir Chaudhary haters will now shoot this down and claim there is ample evidence that the channel serves its political masters (they’ll point to this, this, this, this, this and this). Well, you rootless cosmopolitans, the equation is rather indirect—one serves the people by serving the masters it elects. *mic drop*.

In April last year, in a segment on Zee News, Sudhir Chaudhary asked the following questions:

1. A man let his son and nephew rape a girl. How is this possible?

2. The temple where the victim was raped had four windows and three doors. How could the girl have been raped there?

3. The son of the temple priest, Vishal Jangotra, was taking an examination in Meerut. How could he have committed a crime in Jammu?

The father has been found guilty by the court, and the nephew’s fate is to be decided by a juvenile court. So spare us the sanskari onslaught, Mr Chaudhary. The temple did have all those windows and doors, (and even God, who was tragically a prime witness in the case), but the chargesheet had noted that the victim was drugged and hidden inside the temple: “…they took the girl and kept her inside Devisthan under the table over two Chatayees (plastic Mats) and then covered her with two Darees (cotton thread Mats).”

As for Jangotra, he has been acquitted by the court. Mr Chaudhary was quick to jump on this and claim vindication on his show. He claimed that Zee News had proved that Vishal was in Meerut that day because of footage showing him in an ATM in Meeranpur, Muzzaffarnagar. This, said Chaudhary, led to his acquittal.  

In its verdict, however, the court stated that the prosecution did not verify the authenticity of this news report. “No statement of any official of SBI Meeranpur was recorded regarding this. He (Sub Inspector Urfan Wani) further admitted that on confiscating the hard disk pertaining to the ATM of Meeranpur, the said hard disk was never sealed from any magistrate,” the court said.   

It’s a pyrrhic victory, Mr Chaudhary. And did you talk about the absurdity and ignorance of the other two questions you asked? No. You let that slide.

Absolutely cuckoo: Madhu Kishwar

With the apostles of lies, cowardice and spins in full sway, how far thou remain, St Cuckoo? Though it tarries, wait for it.

In April 2018, Kishwar had claimed that the Kathua rape is the handiwork of “jehadi” Rohingyas in Jammu. She alleged that the then J&K CM Mehbooba Mufti used the murder as a “counterblast strategy” to deal with Hindu anger over their settlement.

And then she uncovered the ultimate plot behind the case in a long Twitter thread:

All this bunkum wasn’t just reserved for social media. According to Kashmir Reader, Kishwar travelled to Jammu in April last year to convince the victim’s father that he should defer the case to the CBI, and not the local J&K police.

Recounting the meeting, the father said: “They (Kishwar and her companions) wanted us to go for a CBI investigation. They said, what is the problem with a CBI probe? They (CBI) will do proper investigations into the case. Aapko kya takleef hai (what is your grievance)?

“I told them I don’t want a CBI probe. I am satisfied with the Crime Branch investigations. The government is doing the right thing. Wo doodh ka doodh aur paani ka paani nikalenge (they will bring out the truth).”

Despite Kishwar’s odious efforts, the case was left to the police. When the verdict was announced on Monday, Kishwar’s denial was both calumnious and comic:

There is no guarantee that Ms Kishwar’s mendacity will ebb in coming days, weeks and years. But at least her communal candour on Kathua has flagged her social media space as a “no-go zone”, and thus prevented a bout of widespread nausea in the public sphere for the coming days. Except there’s no doubt that she’ll continue to be present on TV news debates as some sort of a political analyst.