The journalist in question works for www.factchecker.in, which is an arm of the data portal, Indiaspend. Factchecker.in is a self-certified ‘fact-checking’ website that maintains a database of religious hate crimes in India.

I have been a critic of the portal for its strong bias against Hindu victims of religious hate, and had sought a response on why the Begusarai case was not part of that database.

It was in response to this query that the said journalist approached the Dalit family. The family lives in an almost all-Muslim colony in Begusarai district’s Nurpur village. It comprises a woman and two children — a college-going daughter and a minor school-going son. The woman’s husband and older son live and work in Saudi Arabia.

Here’s how the conversation between the journalist and the minor son goes (as translated):

Reporter: “Please narrate the incident that happened with you in June, and is it true that you were attacked because you are Hindus and they are Muslims and they want to drive you out or was it something else…”

In reply, the boy narrates the events of the night of 10 June when his 25-year-old neighbour Laddu Alam, along with two other men — one of the completely naked — barged into his house and attempted to rape his mother and sister and also thrashed him.

He tells the journalist that the accused’s family has been threatening them to leave the village. Even before the 10 June attack, the accused had been harassing them for quite some time. They would watch his mother bathe and would enter into scuffles over petty issues.

“Now they tell me that their men would soon be out of jail. They say it’s certain that we will have to leave, whether we do that laughing or crying,” the boy says.

Reporter: “Does this Muslim family harass other Hindu families in the village too?”

The boy says that other Dalit families give in to the pressures of the local Muslims and do whatever they are asked to do, such as clean their houses. His family, however, refuses to do so and thus is constantly targeted.

He says that other Hindu families have long been scared into silence.

Reporter: “What was the role of Bajrang Dal in the police case that you lodged? Did they also give their inputs or were the allegations in your complaint real?”

The boy praises the Hindu outfit for their help.

Reporter: “It was published somewhere that Muslims are forcing you out as you are Hindus. Tell me, when the accused threatened you, did they specifically mention that they are doing this to you because you are Hindus? I am sure they never said anything like that…”

The boy says that in village gatherings, the accused often asked the Dalit family why they needed to live among Muslims instead of a Hindu area. “On the night of the attack, they kept on telling us that we should leave,” the boy says.

Reporter: “You go to school, right? You must be aware how the atmosphere has become very communal these days with constant Hindu-Muslim tiffs. Sometimes Hindus are getting killed and sometimes Muslims.

So I want to know whether you consider the attack a criminal act or a communal act. I mean, had it been a Muslim family in place of yours, the accused would have still attacked them, isn’t it? Because they seem to want the house you live in.”

The boy maintains they were attacked for being Hindus and many other Muslim neighbours are complicit. He says the village has all of three Hindu families and there are several restrictions on them. They are not even allowed to play their songs. He says the family is seriously considering the option of leaving the village as most residents are pressuring them to withdraw the police case.

This conversation not only confirms the narrative-peddlers’ discomfort with such atrocities but also reveals the lengths they go to for white-washing them.

The journalist makes it clear in the beginning itself that his singular aim is to question the Hindu-Muslim narrative; he shows little regard to the sensitivity of the crime or the fact that the victim on the phone is a minor Dalit boy. He slyly attempts to manipulate the boy into saying that the Bajrang Dal influenced the filing of the complaint.

The publication that the journalist refers to, obviously, is Swarajya. Note the attempt at discrediting the report despite the fact that it was based on video statements of the victims that were made public.

As per Newar, the reporter was attempting to make the boy rethink the hate angle by shaming and guilt-tripping him towards the end of the conservation. “He was clearly trying to make the victim guilty of inciting violence against Muslims across India by talking about the hate angle,” Newar told Swarajya.

He added, “I did not also understand the questions on specific utterances of the attackers to prove hate. Do attackers inform the victims of their motivations? Are religious motivations of a crime established by express statement of the perpetrator?”

Newar, an alumnus of the Indian Institute of Technology, Guwahati, and the Indian Institute of Management, Calcutta, has been involved with the case since June. He learnt about it through the Swarajya report and took it to the National Commission for Scheduled Castes.

In the following weeks, probe revealed severe lapses on the part of the local police, who were trying to shield the perpetrators. The head of the local police station was suspended for changing the original FIR.

Two counter FIRs against the victim family --- including one where the Dalit boy was accused of creating communal enmity --- were found to be motivated and false. On the commission’s direction, the family was given police protection, as per Newar.

When faced with inconvenient cases such as the Begusarai one, narrative-peddlers first ignore and look the other way. If they can’t, they play down the atrocity. If needed, they shoot the messenger. If victims are to be branded as liars for this purpose, so be it.

That’s what the co-founder of a self-certified fact-checking website, named Altnews, did. He slyly called for my arrest.