Following the ghastly terror attack on the CRPF convoy in Pulwama on February 14 which claimed lives of 40 Indian soldiers, as the nation mourned, some floated conspiracy theories while few celebrated the deaths of our soldiers. Even before the tears could dry up, a narrative was being built to whitewash the terrorist. 

Anguished and angered by such instances, especially those calling for war against India and justifying the killing of the jawans, a group of youngsters had come together to report social media profiles to law enforcement agencies. A bunch of people on social media reached out to the educational institutes and companies these people who got into a celebratory mode after the terror attack and questioned them regarding their policies. Last week, this group was awarded Social Media Patrakarita Narad Samman by Indraprastha Vishwa Samvad Kendra. 

On Wednesday, the Indian Express published a demeaning report on these bunch of people insinuating that they wrongly termed the people who seemed to be celebrating Pulwama attacks as ‘anti-nationals’. Aviral Sharma, a member of the Clean The Nation team has written a response to the Indian Express article which is reproduced below:

Liberals have regrouped again and have decided to tarnish the image of young professionals like us, whose only mistake was that they decided to raise their voice against the supporters of terrorism and the brutal killing of 40 CRPF soldiers in the cowardly Pulwama attack, earlier this year.

In the aftermath of the Pulwama terror attack, there were some Indians who were celebrating on the internet and were rejoicing over the death of CRPF soldiers. These soldiers died while protecting you and me the very same people who mocked their martyrdom calling them rapists, barbarians and what not.

This was not the first time that something as shameful as this was happening. This country had seen such things after every terrorist attack in the past when there are some people who shamelessly start supporting the terrorist and mock the victims of the attack. But it was for the first time that the collective consciousness of the people was saddened by this act and forced them to raise their voice against this inhuman act of supporting barbarians and terrorists. Amidst this, a group of young men mostly in their 20s took it upon themselves to render the duty of a responsible citizen and raise this issue and that is how “Clean the Nation” was formed.

Clean the Nation started as a Facebook group with 10 people & gained 4500 members in just a day of it’s creation. This group started getting targeted as soon as it got created when facebook deleted the group in just 24 Hours. The group was again created and things took off again. This group facilitated the growing anger of the people by taking the complaints coming from different parts of the country to the concerned authorities. It was completely a peoples’ movement where every responsible citizen took active part and contributed towards its success.

Today an article published in the Indian Express, showed this team in bad light and the people who abused the Pulwama martyrs as victims who were harassed without any fault.

Team Clean the Nation was recently awarded the Social Media Patrakarita Narad Samman, after which a news was published in the Indian Express that only showed one side of the story and singled out the members of this team by showing them as unjust men who got some innocent people arrested.

The pseudo liberal writer of this news piece very conveniently showed only one side of the story and did not show the anti-India social media write-ups of the people who they portrayed as victims.

Here is the screenshot of the social media post of the cases mentioned in the Indian Express article-

Suspension of an Assistant professor in Guwahati

The professor named Papri Z Banerjee, did not just celebrate the killings but also justified the cowardly attack by calling the security force personnel as rapists and murderers.

Post that led to an arrest in Jaipur

After Wing Commander Abhinandan Vardhman’s aircraft crashed into the enemy territory and he was apprehended by the Pakistani forces. A Jaipur based technocrat Tauseef Azhar, prayed that the Wing Commander dies soon. Team CTN reported this matter on Twitter to the Jaipur police after which tauseef Azhar was arrested.

Suspension of a Kashmiri student from a college in Noida

Eshfaq Khawaja, a resident of Kashmir’s Baramulla, studying in Noida’s IIMT college, justified the attack as a retaliation of the Indian forces do in Kashmir. Team CTN reported this matter to the college administration and later complained to the police authorities following which Eshfaq Khawaja was suspended from the college.

As evident from these screenshots, at no point in time during the course of this movement did the team took law into their own hands and have always reported the matter to the concerned authorities, which was always the institutions they were working/studying or the police in some cases.

The liberal brigade has always defended such acts under the garb of freedom of speech and that every citizen in a democracy has the right to freely express himself and speak what they feel. In the same way we also have the right as citizens of a great democracy called India to take the legal route and complaint about those who mock our martyred soldiers.

Editor’s note: Earlier in February, left-leaning website Scroll had also attacked the Clean The Nation group and tried to paint the group as ‘targeted harassment’ while giving ‘context’ to messages of those who were reported for celebrating a terror attack.