Indian Mainstream Media’s Anti- Muslim bias: Almost no regards for ethics and morality

The acquittal of 31 accused in Babri Case four days ago was a big news for mainstream Indian Media. The Media ignores innumerable  acquittals of Muslim Youths arbitrarily arrested on terrorism charges, put behind bars for years and then set free by the Courts for lack of evidence.  Acquittals of such innocent Muslim Youth are either not reported or reported casually.  Their arrests always become a breaking news in the Indian Media as it goes overdrive in running an instant media trial of the accused, tarnishing their image and pronouncing them as guilty before the actual trial in a Court of law.

On May 13, 2015, Scroll.in published news about the low key acquittal of 17 fake Hubli Terror Conspiracy Caseaccused whose arrest was a  big breaking news in 2008.  The 17 accused Muslim youths were a motley group of doctors, medical, engineering students, electricians, auto drivers and employees of multinational corporations  who were alleged to be top SIMI leaders” of varying ages.  The mainstream media screamed over their arrests and run follow up news days.  They were accused of being part of a hit squad of the banned Students Islamic Movement of India and arrested for allegedly planning a serious of terror strikes across the nerve centers of Karnataka, including the Kaiga Nuclear plant, the Hublic airport and offices of major companies like Infosys, Dell and IBM.

The arrested youths were described as “terrorists” and accused of waging a war against the state. They were booked under  the stringent UAPA and dozens of other IPC Sections. The Media ran their trials and declared them guilty even before the Court proceeding started.  But, these seventeen Muslim youths were finally acquitted by a Hubli court of terror charges in April 2015 .  And unlike their high profile arrest eight years ago, their acquittal was an insignificant news.  Some newspapers published this news in brief with heading like

seven long years of the trial and big setback to the police!

On May 28, 1994, Twelve Muslim youths were arrested from Bhusawal in Maharashtra post Babri Mosque demolition with the false allegation that they were planning terrorist attacks in the country to avenge the destruction of the Babri Masjid and that they had been trained in Pakistan and Kashmir.  The Electronic and Print Media made it a big news and run it for days.  They were arrested under (TADA) and several other sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). The special TADA Court in Nashik found these Muslim Youths innocent

on February 27, 2019 and the Judge S.C. Khatri ordered their acquittal from all charges owing to lack of evidence and violation of TADA guidelines during investigation.  While their arrests were a breaking news on electronic and print mdia, their acquittal was not reported by the Main stream media except the digital medias like newsclick”, the Wire and such other news portals.

Pusad town in eastern Maharashtra made headlines in Septembr 2015 when news emerged that  Abdul Malik,  a young Muslim man of 21, had stabbed three policemen with a Kitchen knife, allegedly in rage over the beef ban introduced that year.  Soon two other youths Shoib Khan, 28 from Hingoli and Maulana Mujeeb-ur-Rehman, 30, from Yavatmal were arrested by Maharashtra’s ATS.

Soon, headlines appeared in newspapers and the electronic media describing Khan, Malik and Mujeb-ur-Rehman as radicalized youth involved with the Islamic State or ISIS.  The Times of India described their arrest as the “crippling” of a “terror module-in-the-making”.  Nearly four years later, on May 21, 2019, a special court in Akola acquitted all three men  clearing them of all terror related charges under the controversial Unlawful Activities Prevention Act (UAPA) for planning alleged acts of “Jihad” as the ATS failed to present any evidence against these men linking them to any terror plot.

The Media’s reaction to the three men’s acquittal had been starkly different from the coverage of their arrests in 2015.  Only some Marathi newspapers reported the news with such headlines as ATS mistaken investigation ruined three and a half years of youth’s lives!” and Will the Maharashtra Government compensate innocent Shoib?The contrast between the news of their arrests and their acquittals was quite remarkable.

As per a report published in “the Hindu” on December 1, 2012, Kanpur based Syed Wasif Haider was arrested in August 2001 on 12 terror related charges.  He was acquitted on August 12, 2009 after serving a sentence over charges of rioting and attacking a PAC vehicle.  Though he was not booked under TADA or POTA still his arrest was a big breaking news, while his acquittal was mute and treated as an insignificant news.

In yet another such case, when Mufti Abdul Qaiyum, the dangerous mastermind of the Akshardham attack-  as he was referred to – was declared innocent and set free.  He found that during the 11 years he spent in prison, his father had died, his family had lost its home and the family members had become outcasts.   His acquittal, unlike his breaking news arrest was not considered worthy to be reported.

 On September 1, 2018, “The Indian Express published a review of a book  titled Framed As a Terrorist”  written by Mohammad Aamir Khan one of the six accused of terror attack on Akshardham nine years ago. Aamir’s book, the paper says, is his memoir of his lost youth in this grand farcical theatre of terror investigations in India which is more or less the account of hundreds of innocent Muslim Youths who were arrested under terror charges  with breaking news and instant media trial wherein the “accused” were declared as “terrorist” and “guilty” instantly before the trial begin in the Court of Law.

The paper narrates the reasons behind Aamir’s arrest.  His married sister lived in Karachi and the first time when he decided to visit her, he was 20.  The moment he got the visa, he was approached by an intelligence sleuth, Guptaji, who asked him whether he was willing to do something for his country.  Without understanding the consequences, Aamir recalls, he answered that I was willing to serve my country.  The service,according to the Paper, was to become a spy.  In Pakistan, Aamir was given a bag with documents to smuggle back.  He recalls getting scared when he saw Pakistani officials thoroughly searching the luggage of Indian passengers as they stood in line for the Samjhauta Express to Delhi.  He threw the bag.  It was February 1998.

As soon as he reached Delhi, the Paper wrote, he informed Guptaji of his inability to carry out the task, thus his ordeal began.  A few days later, he was abducted and kept in illegal custody for eight days.  He provides a detailed account of how he was mercilessly tortured in custody, made to sign on blank papers, fake diary entries and even made to write a letter to his parents asking them to send his identification papers.  He talks of anti Muslim slurs that were routine during his interrogation.  By the time, his parents got to know about his arrest, he had already been declared a noted terrorist.  The paper further  wrote in its review of Aamir’s book that nobody wanted to listen to him.  It took him 14 years and a lot of luck to prove  his innocence.

Aamir was framed as a terrorist and falsely accused in 18 bomb  blast cases.  When he was finally released on January 12, 2012 from Rohtak Jail his release was treated as an insignificant news by the Media not worthy to be reported.

The said article of The Indian Express” narrated the ordeal and the lost years  of other Muslim youths accused of terror charges.

According to media reports the  Gujarat police gave Mohammad Saleem three options to select one to implicate himself:  In Godhra train burning, Haren Pandya’s murder or the Akshardham terror attack!  Saleem’s daughter was four months old when he was arrested and by the time he was released from the prison she was a 10 years old girl.

On June 17, 1996 at 3 am, Maqbool Shah from Srinagar, then a 17 year old boy was woken up and arrested by the Delhi Police from his ranted room in Delhi for his alleged involvement in Lajpat Nagar blast, as usual with a big breaking news in the mainstream media.  He was in Tihar Jail for almost 14 years.  On April 8, 2010, a Delhi court acquitted Shah of all the terror charges and ordered his release which, unlike his high profile arrest, was not reported by the mainstream media.  He had lost 14 precious years of his youth but still the media had not find anything worth writing about his innocence and his lost years.

There were dozens of terror cases after the incident of Babri Masjid Demolition wherein hundreds of Muslim Youths were arrested since yearly Nineties of the last Millennium  on terror charges and for waging war against the state ostensibly connected with terrorist outfits such as Indian Mujahideen, Deccan Mujahideen, Al Qaida, LeT, JeM and ISIS etc.

In every such high profile trumpeted terror case, Muslim youths were incarcerated in prison for years and then were acquitted by the Courts for lack of evidence.  Their acquittal was always treated as an insignificant news not worthy to be reported by the electronic media or published on front page by the print media.

The paper described that the stories of all the accused Muslim youths, in essence, are a single story.  The names of the characters vary, the religion usually remains the same.  The locations change, but mostly they come from the same social strata. This grand story is scripted by the police, and the agencies across India, the labyrinths of the judiciary and young Muslims men who get lost in them and the lead role is always  played by a partisan media trying always to be in the good book of the ruling establishment to gain perks and bounties by doing armchair reporting from the cozy environs of their air conditioned studios.

In this book review, The Indian Express noted that The media is equally responsible because they make the arrest and not the culmination of the judicial process as the climax of a terror investigation.  So, the paper goes on, when a Muslim man is arrested in connection with a terror case, he is deemed guilty forever.  It is the media which turns the fiction of these police investigations into facts for people.  Questioning the police narrative in a terror case is considered nothing less than blasphemy against the nation-state.  The ‘doubters in the media, though far and few, are vilified.

Harping on terror bogey pays rich dividends to the political outfits, especially prior to elections, in reaching to the seat of power.  They shrewdly use media by offering it unlimited perks and bounties to divide the society on religious lines. Raising Terror Bogey” to tarnish the image of the Muslims and portraying them as terrorists is one of the most effective way of getting votes of the majority community.

Terror laws are misused against Indian Muslims.  There are hundreds of young men like Aamir who were framed and are languishing in Jails.

  Mainstream Media is equally responsible for what innocent Muslim youth had to suffer due to fake terror charges against them. Injustice impedes the progress of a nation and hence it is the duty of the fourth estate the Media  to be impartial and objective in performing its task conscientiously.

(www.siyasat.net is Ahmedabad, Gujarat,India based website)

(The writer is Hyderabad based freelancer journalist. Views are personal)