On the back of Amit Shah’s testimony in court in the 2002 Naroda Gam riots case, an old video of Arnab Goswami resurfaced on social media in which he talks about his experience while he was in Gujarat covering the 2002 riots. In this video, he claims that the car in which he was traveling was attacked near then Chief Minister Narendra Modi’s residence. The original video has been deleted hence we have re-uploaded the video.

The rough transcript of the video is as follows:

And we came out 50m from his residence and we were stopped. Suddenly our Ambassador car is stopped and there are people who are breaking the windows with trishuls. They are breaking the windows..all the windows are broken. It’s almost as if there are trishuls all around and I know this is very unsavory but I must share with you the reality of life as I have seen it. When that happens we are all going to reveal our religion. It is 50m from the Chief Minister’s house. How it happened, I don’t know. We said we are journalists .. (No, No.. what is your religion, what is your religion) And thankfully there was nobody from minority community with us…We had our identity cards, press cards, my driver didn’t have a press card, I looked at him, and I was sitting in the front, I have an obsession with sitting in the front seat and I looked to my right and I can see the look on my driver’s face. When people talk of secularism, I have seen hate from up close and I know that group of people would have killed him. He had a Tattoo, he put a ‘hey ram’ or something on his .. it is not a tattoo, it is just actually an imprint that you put which stays with you. He showed that and we walked out. But I saw for that moment how scared you..

However, soon after the video reappeared on social media, Rajdeep Sardesai in a series of tweets claimed that Arnab was misrepresenting facts. It was actually Rajdeep himself who was in the car and he had written about this in his book “2014: The Election That Changed India”.

Wow! My friend Arnab claims his car attacked next to CM Res in Guj riots! Truth:he wasn't covering Ahmedabad riots!! https://t.co/xOe7zY8rCp — Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) September 19, 2017

Yes, incident which Arnab speaks of did happen. Only he wasn't there, some of us who actually were on ground zero were! (Read my 2014 book)😀 — Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) September 19, 2017

He also retweeted a couple of journalists who were in Ahmedabad with Rajdeep during this period with Sanjeev Singh being the NDTV Correspondent based out of Ahmedabad during this time period.

Thank you Sanjeev. Since you were @ndtv correspondent in Ahmedabad at the time for setting the record straight also. https://t.co/Th4q7fOoWG — Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) September 19, 2017

Reconfirmed by another of our correspondents on the ground. Time to set the record straight and call out impostors. https://t.co/TKvaPKvuhx — Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) September 19, 2017

Alt News spoke to Sanjeev Singh and he told us that Rajdeep had gone to CM Modi’s place to get his views on the Godhra train burning incident and the ensuing riots on Feb 28th. Later they realised that the clip did not have any audio which meant that the interview had to be re-recorded. At this point, Rajdeep and the crew had to go back to CM Modi’s place. There were 5 people in the car including Rajdeep. When they left from CM’s residence after recording the interview, their car was gheraoed by a mob. Sanjeev Singh also told Alt news that Arnab Goswami came later and he was deputed to Kheda district in Gujarat.

Alt News further spoke to one of the camera technicians who was in the crew that visited CM Modi’s place on that day. He confirmed that the sequence of events that were narrated by Arnab Goswami actually happened but Arnab was not present in the car.

As a face saving measure, a Republic TV employee Prema Sridevi has put out a picture in which Arnab Goswami and Rajdeep Sardesai are seen in the same frame with the text, “The crew that covered 2002 Gujarat riots”.

The crew that covered 2002 Gujarat riots pic.twitter.com/W5OEcxTZwm — Prema Sridevi (@premasridevi) September 20, 2017

However, Maya Mirchandani of NDTV confirmed that the picture was taken at a later date.

This was taken over a week later, when Mr Goswami had gone to Kheda for 2 days. Doesn't change his lie! @sardesairajdeep @nalinmehta https://t.co/au1zQoBgUp — Maya Mirchandani (@maya206) September 20, 2017

given that I was around in the newsroom in Delhi, I can confirm this too. Mr Goswami was full of bombast, but from safety of Delhi. https://t.co/CqGfHpkVog — Maya Mirchandani (@maya206) September 20, 2017

It is shameful enough that Arnab Goswami passed off an incident that happened with someone else in a first person narrative but the backhanded attempts of putting out misleading pictures via a Republic Employee puts a further question mark on Arnab Goswami’s journalistic ethics.

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