A day after the horrific case of rape of a 12-year-old girl came to the fore from Madhya Pradesh’s Ujjain city, the Times of India has targeted the Hindu religion through their cartoon on the crime.
In a cartoon sketch shared by Times of India, Chief Cartoonist Sandeep Adhwaryu showed Hindus worshipping a cow while the girl walked with injuries seeking help from the locals in Ujjain. The cartoon sketch also indicates that Hindus chose to worship the cow and deliberately ignored the girl while she sought help.
However, the cartoon missed a major detail, that the girl was helped by a Hindu priest identified as Rahul Sharma. As reported earlier, the victim girl was scared and walking on the streets of Ujjain seeking help. She had injuries on her private parts and was bleeding.
She walked for around 8 km in the city seeking help but to no avail. Finally, when she reached near Dandi Ashram on the Badnagar road in the city, where Rahul Sharma offered her clothes and called for emergency medical service. He informed the police, who recovered the girl and took her to the hospital.
Rahul Sharma told NDTV, “I gave her my clothes. She was bleeding. She could not speak. Her eyes were swollen. I called 100. When I could not reach the cops over the helpline, I contacted the Mahakal police station and informed them about the situation. Police reached the ashram in about 20 minutes.”
Sharma said that at around 9:30 AM on Monday, while he was leaving the ashram, he saw the girl near the gates, who was partially naked and clearly injured with blood running down both of her legs. Several other media reports also highlighted that the girl was saved by a Hindu priest associated with the Dandi Ashram.
Sharma added that although the girl was terrified of everyone, she was able to trust him to some extent. “Whenever someone else approached her, she tried to hide behind me. Then police came and took her with them,” he said.
The Times of India cartoon, however, instead of recognising and lauding the Hindu priest for rescuing the girl, targeted Hinduism by showing Hindus worshiping a cow and ignoring the girl while she sought help.
After the cartoon triggered outrage on social media, Sandeep Adhwaryu issued a ‘clarification’, saying that it was his personal cartoon and had nothing to do with Times of India, even though the cartoon clearly carried the heading: TOI- Line of no control. He claimed, “The presence of TOI logo in my previous post was inadvertent as I had forgotten to remove it from the standard format of the frame before posting.”
Three persons have been arrested by the Police in the rape case, including an auto-rickshaw driver. According to Narottam Mishra, the home minister for Madhya Pradesh, a suspect has been detained and a special investigation team (SIT) has been established to look into the situation. The accused has been charged with rape in accordance with the Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act.
The girl belongs to Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh, and says that her mother has also been raped and assaulted. The Police have filed a case and are investigating as to why the girl and her mother had come to Ujjain and why were they being followed
