Your weekly dose of all the insanity that passes off as news on TV.

Move on from Bollywood films, pyaar ke dushman are now found on primetime debates in TV news studios.

This week, the bogey of “love jihad” reached Kashmir. It was alleged that a Sikh woman in Srinagar had been abducted at gunpoint and forced to marry a 60-year-old Muslim man. Amish Devgan, Arnab Goswami and anchors of Zee News played up the story, but didn’t get the basic facts right. We were told that religious minorities were a threat to the majority community in India, and alleged forced conversions to Islam were the flavour of the week.

But what is the actual story of Manmeet Kaur and Shahid Bhat, and other Kashmiri Sikh women whose names cropped up this week? What role did Akali Dal politician Manjinder Singh Sirsa play?

Watch.

Reading list

Newslaundry’s Covid coverage from Rajasthan and Maharashtra

The curious case of ‘1,000 conversions’: Who is Umar Gautam?

How did Mannu Yadav and Aditya Gupta convert to Islam?

A Very Sikh Woman

She married a Muslim. Then she was snatched and married again

J&K ‘conversion’ row: Man in jail, sister says ‘didn’t like relationship’

Day after: J&K woman caught in ‘conversion’ row wed to fellow Sikh

Pew research: Key findings about religion in India