In a recent case of mob lynching, a lassi shop owner in Mathura city was beaten to death by a group of customers who refused to pay for the refreshment drink.

On May 18, Bharat, along with his brother, were at their lassi shop in Chowk Bazar area when an altercation ensued between the shopkeepers and a group of men who refused to pay for the lassi. The men went away only to return an hour later with a mob carrying iron rods, sticks and other weapons, and assaulted the duo brutally. All this happened in front of the police personnel posted in the area.

The incident stoked communal tension in the area as large number of forces were deployed to forbid any clashes from taking place. FIR was registered against Mohammad Hanif, Mohammad Shahrukh and 15 others under the relevant sections of the IPC.

A mob lynching is a mob lynching, and the religion of either the victim or the culprit does not affect the heinous nature of the crime. A crime as such should be looked upon as a crime and condemned in an unanimous voice without taking religion, caste or any such identity into consideration. However that unfortunately does not seem to be the case with a greater section of our media.

We are talking about that section of the media that first looks into religious and caste identities of the victim and the culprit in such incidents of murder or lynching and then decides how much importance is to be given to that story.

Have a loot at the heading of Times Of India’s article on the Mathura story which says, “Tension prevails after shopkeeper beaten to death by people of the other community.” The first thing to take note of from this heading is that how carefully the term “lynching” or “lynched” has been avoided by the author as if the terms are exclusively reserved for crimes carried out by crowds belonging to one particular religion.

The second thing to take note of from this heading is how the identities of the victim and the culprits have been concealed by saying “other community.” One here may argue that this is the right thing to do for a responsible media house as directly naming communities may flare up tensions. We also agree that news reports should not be provocative in any way and media houses must act in a matured way. However, this matured brand of journalism should be applied on all stories and not selectively.

This is the same TOI which on many occasions had vividly indicated the identities of those involved, especially in stories where the odds were opposite. Take an example of this recent story, where the headline clearly states that the culprits were “Gau Rakshaks,” giving a direct indication of their religious identity.



This is just the one out of a long long list. Times of India is one out of hundreds of national and regional media houses in this country which apply different standards on similar stories after taking the identities of those involved into consideration. Here it may also be noted that in this article we have emphasised only on headings as they make the first impression upon readers, and not on the content inside the articles.

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