A tweet went viral on Saturday where a user advocated for ‘Sanghis’ to be put in concentration camps. Now, it has turned out that the user who made the genocidal comments, @NarovaKunjarova, is a columnist for The Wire. The person behind the account is one Parth Pandya and he has since then deleted the tweet.
The issue was first pointed out by Twitter user @BefittingFacts who shared screenshots that showed that @NarovaKunjarova previously tweeted under the username @Parth_Utters and has written article for The Wire.
According to the author profile on The Wire, @parth_utters is Parth Pandya, a freelance sports writer based in Ahmedabad. That the person behind @NarovaKunjarova is Parth Pandya was seemingly confirmed by journalist Navneet Mundhra.
Navneet Mundhra appears to be well acquainted with Parth Pandya.
Navneet Mundhra and Parth Pandya have been interacting with each other since at least 2017.
Parth Pandya is a regular contributor for The Wire. He has penned 36 articles for the leftist website so far, between April 2018 and September 2021.
The controversy started after one user suggested that “India will need ‘reeducation camps’ when all this ends.” While the user, with the username @Maganlal1303, did not elaborate what “this” was in the tweet, the replies and comments to it make it abundantly clear.
Quoting the tweet, said that he won’t mind “locking up Sanghis in camps” and “brainwashing them with doses of belt treatment”. The user, with username @NavrovaKunjarova, went on to assert that “these people” do not “deserve their ideas to be constitutionally protected”.
He did not stop there and went on to assert that what Mamata Banerjee is doing in West Bengal “will need to be scaled up manifolds”. Political violence against BJP workers and leaders has been rife in West Bengal in the aftermath of TMC’s victory in the assembly elections. The user was clearly hinting at that.
Parth is not the only The Wire columnist with problematic opinions. Sharjeel Imam, the Islamist who had called for the North East to be cut off from the rest of India, was also a columnist for The Wire.
