On April 3, Gujarati web portal Web News Duniya reported on six members of a Dalit family in Gujarat who were “tricked” into donating Rs 10 crore through electoral bonds to the BJP. 

The report said the family was approached by an official of Welspun Enterprises Ltd, a company linked to the Adani Group. They subsequently bought bonds worth over Rs 11 crore – Rs 10 crore was encashed by the BJP and a little over Rs 1 crore by the Shiv Sena.

Newslaundry previously reported on the Welspun Group’s links to Adani, and how three of its subsidiaries bought electoral bonds worth Rs 55 crore, of which Rs 42 crore went to the BJP.

By April 8, The Quint reported on the family too. One of the family members told the news portal that Welspun had acquired about 43,000 square metres of their agricultural land in Anjar for a “project”. 

“This money was part of the compensation we were given as per law. But at the time of depositing this money, Mahendrasinh Sodha, a senior +general manager at the company, told us that such a huge amount can result in trouble with the income tax department...He then introduced us to the electoral bond scheme, which he said would ensure that we get 1.5 times the amount in a few years,” said Haresh Savakara, 41.

He added, “We are illiterate people. We had no clue what this scheme was but at that time it sounded very convincing.” 

It’s a shocking story and, unsurprisingly, a number of digital news outlets published reports on the case, including HW News, Vibes of India and Satya Hindi. Others like Media One, Asianet News Tamil, and Dool News and also journalist Ravish Kumar’s YouTube channel picked up the story too. 

But among mainstream news outlets, especially news channels, there’s a curious silence. Newslaundry could not find references to the case among major news organisations. 

Importantly, the family filed a police complaint at Anjar police station on March 18. It names Welspun directors Viswanathan Kollengode, Sanjay Gupta, Chintan Thaker, and Praveen Bhansali, as well as Welspun senior general manager Mahendrasinh Sodha, Anjar land acquisition officer Vimal Kishore Joshi, and BJP Anjar city president Hemant alias Danny Rajinikanth Shah.

But perhaps we shouldn’t be too surprised at Big Media’s silence. After the Election Commission published data on the electoral bonds scheme, it found few takers, especially among news channels. But Newslaundry partnered with Scroll, The News Minute and independent journalists to sort through the data. Check out our work here.

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