The sheer enormity of the brutality heaped upon IB officer Ankit Sharma by the Islamist mob allegedly headed by Tahir Hussain, AAP Corporator shocked the nation. Ankit Sharma, a friendly, ambitious idealistic IB officer was brutally murdered with hundreds of stab wounds, torture marks and his intestines ripped apart. His remains were then thrown into the drain, mercilessly. While the country reeled under the shock of a government official being so brutally tortured during the Delhi riots, the Left media, treated him as just another name.
Tahir Hussain, the AAP corporator is reportedly missing after an FIR was filed against him for his involvement in the Delhi anti-Hindu riots and the brutal murder of Ankit Sharma. While the cacophony to arrest Tahir Hussain grows louder, AAP, headed by Arvind Kejriwal has sent mixed signals about its intent. After the party suspended Hussain from primary membership, Amanatullah Khan, AAP’s go-to leader for all things Muslim, has come out to vociferously defend Hussain.
The brutality, the political involvement and the fact that during the anti-Hindu riots, this was one of the two cases of extreme brutality that emerged should have ideally been the focal point of the media. The Left, which often postulates as the harbingers of human rights, justice and fair-play, flatly closed their eyes. The ones who didn’t proceed to term the anti-Hindu riots and the brutality heaped as self-defence, even though petrol bombs, acid pouches, stones, swords etc were found on the terrace of Tahir Hussain.
The Left media followed the decided narrative of the rest of the Islamist apologists to the very last word. Till the FIR was filed, several Left media outlets did not even bother covering the brutal murder of Ankit Sharma.
The first article that The Wire wrote on the murder of Ankit Sharma, was on the shoddy defence that was presented by the AAP corporator Tahir Hussain.
In the article, while dedicated a few sentences to the killing of Ankit Sharma, in the rest of the article, The Wire chose to talk about what the BJP leaders were tweeting. They even went on the assert that it was because of the statements made by Kapil Mishra that violence had erupted in the National Capital. In the rest of the article, they regurgitated several lies that were peddled by AAP leaders and functionaries to shield Tahir Hussain.
The second article that The Wire wrote on Ankit Sharma’s brutal death only mentioned the FIR being filed and repeated some of the lies by Hussain.
After the initial report of the body being found, Scroll stuck to reporting aspects where AAP was trying to defend itself and Tahir Hussain.
Apart from a token coverage of the body being found and an FIR being lodged, the Scroll’s coverage too focusses primarily on AAP’s defence.
While a Muslim mob lynched, knifed and tortured IB official Ankit Sharma to death, Caravan, that was counting castest of martyrs post-Pulwama decided to discover the depths of dishonest reportage.
They, of course, had only one article that mentioned Ankit Sharma. The headline of the article, unsurprisingly, was, “Driven by Islamophobia, Gokalpuri’s Hindus justify targeted arson of mosque, Muslim homes”.
In the article itself, Ankit Sharma was mentioned once. In the article, Caravan was not too convinced that Hindus were attacked at all and made it about “Upper caste Hindus” and “Brahmins” trying to convince people other them being attacked by Islamists. Their focus was some mosque, not the fact that a man had been stabbed by an Islamist mob comprising of thousands and was then dumped in the drain. In fact, they didn’t even seem too convinced about it.
Even while casting aspersions on the Hindu victims, the castes of the eyewitnesses were mentioned by Caravan simply to shield the Islamists who murdered and tortured Hindus.
Read: The worst of 2019: Caravan asking the caste of fallen Pulwama jawans
When talking about the Media’s reportage of Ankit Sharma’s murder, one has to mention how Wall Street Journal seemingly fabricated a quote by Ankit Sharma’s brother. While Ankur has maintained that his brother was killed by a Muslim mob led by Tahir Hussain, Wall Street Journal managed to write in their report that Ankur had told them a mob screaming Jai Shree Ram had murdered the IB officer. Nothing could be far from the truth. When OpIndia spoke to Ankur, Ankur flat-out refused that he had ever made such a statement to the media.
While The Print did cover the allegations and statements made by Ankit Sharma’s family, a report that they published did have problematic statements that almost painted Tahir Hussain as an innocent man.
In one of their articles where they covered which channel discussed what on Prime Time, the adjectives used in the article painted an innocent picture of Hussain.
While Tahir is accused of serious crimes, The Print led by Shekhar Gupta when it says that he responded in his ‘trembling voice’ tries to insinuate that he is an innocent man almost being bullied by the media.
The media has been shamelessly trying to shield the Islamists and paint Hindus as the aggressors even before the Delhi anti-Hindu riots broke out. With the Delhi riots, that cacophony has reached its zenith.
Only recently, left-wing portal NDTV – which has a history of absolving even Islamic terrorists from their crimes, on Thursday resorted to rescue Muslim mobs by watering down the crime by carefully editing the mosque out of the drone video.
In a report titled, ‘Drones Monitoring Situation In Violence-Hit Delhi Areas’, NDTV cropped images of the mosque to mislead the readers on the real nature of the anti-Hindu riots and tried to hide the images where it can be clearly seen that the local mosques had stored stones to attack the Hindus during the communal riots.
