A priest of a temple in Bokna village, Sapaotra division of Karauli district of Rajasthan succumbed to burns on Thursday night after he was set ablaze by five persons on Wednesday over a land issue. While the family of the priest along with thousands of others have gathered to stage protests against the Ashok Gehlot-led Congress government in Rajasthan, demanding compensation and strict and speedy action against the perpetrators, Aaj Tak, the Hindi news channel owned by India Today group, uses the brutal killing of the priest as a launchpad to fire salvos of criticism at PM Modi and the central government. And while doing so, it also concludes that the priest was not killed but he immolated himself.
Shameless Journalism of Aajtak.
— Ankur Singh (@iAnkurSingh) October 10, 2020
First calls Rajasthan Pujari murder case as ‘आत्मदाह’.
Then says- “अगर पुजारी के घर छत होता तो पुजारी नहीं जलता”. pic.twitter.com/ICyxuSKpMn
Aaj Tak reporter concludes that priest committed “atmadah”
While reporting from Rajasthan’s Karauli village, an Aaj Tak reporter points to the priest’s thatched hut and says that this is the harsh truth behind PM Modi’s Awas Yojana. Continuing his attack at the central government, the Aaj Tak reporter says that seeing the depraved condition of the hut where the priest committed “atmadah” (self-immolation), it seems impossible that PM Modi’s dream of providing proper housing to all under the Awas Yojana would ever come true.
The reporter does not stop at this. The Aaj Tak report artfully shifts the focus from the Congress-led government in the state of Rajasthan to the BJP and the central government. He questions BJP leader Rajyavardhan Rathore on the duties of the central government. He asks: “Isn’t it the BJP and the central government’s responsibility to provide proper houses to every citizen”. He then goes on to conclude that had the priest been provided with a proper house to live in by the BJP government, he would not have died today.
Basically, what the Aaj Tak reporter attempts to do is, instead of holding the Ashok Gehlot government accountable for a brutal murder in the state which has no link with the condition of the house of the victim, he brazenly shift the entire blame on the BJP government.
But this is something which is not new for India Today, the media giant who is embroiled in a TRP scam lately and is one of the accused in the scandal involving payment of bribes to households with bar-o-meters to watch India Today channel daily, in a bid to drive up their shrinking TRPs. India Today has often been caught twisting and turning incidents to push its own set narrative.
Mob kills a Hindu for being in love with a Muslim girl, India Today whitewashes, yet again
Only today, while reporting the incident, where an 18-year-old Delhi University Hindu student was brutally hacked to death in a savage attack by at least 5 assailants—Mohammad Afroz, Mohammad Raj and 3 others—for being in a love affair with a Muslim girl, the media network yet again attempted to whitewash the crime only because the victim here was a Hindu and the accused were Muslims. A trajectory which these leftist media giants have been following since time immemorial to increase their TRPs.
India Today report downplayed communal angle in 2018 murder of Ankit Saxena
Earlier in 2018, the India Today report had sought to understate the horrifying killing of a Hindu boy named Ankit Saxena when his throat was slit in broad daylight by the family members of his Muslim girlfriend.
