Jansatta, a Hindi publication of the Indian Express group yesterday published a report claiming that upper caste people were conducting an ‘Akhand Ramayan’ path in a village in Hamirpur and hence, for ten days, people belonging to the Dalit community are not allowed to come out of their houses.
Taking a cue from Jansatta, NewsX, as well as InKhabar, carried reports basing their stories on “reports”.
The Jansatta article cites a News18 report for the base of the story which claims that not only were the Dalits ‘pushed and thrown out’ of the temple, but the priest of the temple put up a notice outside the temple which banned their entry into the temple. The report cites the priest, Kunwar Bahadur Singh who had accepted that he had put the signature on the notice which barred the entry of Dalits inside the temple.
However, the said incident is not from yesterday but from August 2017. In fact, the News18 report Jansatta has cited dates back to 24th August 2017.
The report even mentions the same priest, saying almost the same thing as Jansatta report.
Later, Hamirpur Police even called out Jansatta for publishing a report from an incident that took place over a year ago.
अवगत कराना है कि उक्त प्रकरण 02 वर्ष पूर्व का है जिसमें पुलिस द्वारा आवश्यक कार्यवाही की जा चुकी है। प्रकरण को बडा-चढ़ा कर प्रकाशित किया गया था। वर्तमान में इस प्रकार की कोई स्थिति नही है।
— HAMIRPUR POLICE (@hamirpurpolice) October 29, 2018
The police said that while the incident is from over a year back, necessary investigation has been carried out. The police added that even the original report was exaggerated.
At the time of publishing this report, none of the publications had updated their reports.
