Leftist propaganda website The Wire on Wednesday published an article with an audio-video byte of the toddler who witnessed his grandfather being killed by terrorists in Sopore on Wednesday to claim that the security forces killed the old man. The Wire claimed that its reporter went to the victim’s house on Wednesday night, just hours after the toddler saw his grandfather being killed in front of his eyes, to talk to the child and ask him ‘who killed your grandfather?’
To put things in perspective, The Wire journalist asked a three-year-old who sat crying on his dead grandfather’s bullet-ridden body just hours prior, ‘who killed him’. The child then allegedly says the police did. The Wire uses this to build a narrative of how the security forces have been lying that the old man was killed by terrorists which also claimed the life of a CRPF jawan.
The Wire gives no reason as to why the CRPF/police may have killed the old man. It only attempts to demonise the security forces based on the testimony of a three-year-old who is expected to know a difference between policemen and terrorists. More importantly, three-year-old is supposed to know what a terrorist is. Or that terrorists also carry guns, as police do. A traumatised child, who was later rescued by the cops says the cops killed his grandpa.
This is not to question the child’s statement. The child does not know the difference between two men with guns. One is a policeman other is a terrorist. For a three-year-old, anyone with a gun is a cop, perhaps. So when he says police killed his grandfather, the propagandists don’t want to give benefit of doubt to security forces who have no motivation or trigger to kill him. They would rather give leeway to terrorists, who kill indiscriminately in the name of religion and jihad than cops who rescued the child from bullets of the same terrorists who killed his grandfather.
It is worthy to note that for anyone stuck in the cross-fire in a gunfight between the security forces and the terrorists, which this was, will have a hard time pinpointing where any specific bullet came from. Thus, the trust the version of a 3-year-old child who can easily be coached shows the desperation of The Wire to further a specific agenda who favours the terrorists and not the security forces.
Further, there are multiple accounts of security personnel, who witnessed the gruesome encounter with the terrorists yesterday where they describe how the terrorists’ indiscriminate firing led to the death of the civilian. However, it turns out, that The Wire rather report the possibly coached version of a three-year-old child, who would otherwise not know anything, than the version of India’s men in uniform.
A local cop who witnessed the scene unfold says how when they tried to move the CRPF soldier who was injured or perhaps fatally wounded, they also saw the civilian was also injured. He says how they also had the challenge of ensuring the little child is not killed in the firing. He says how firing came from a building and hence all were injured from same side. He says how the security forces put their cars in front of the child to shield him from the onslaught of bullets. “Our priority was to evacuate the child,” he says.
Zulfiqar Hasan, ADG CRPF also said that the civilian was killed by the firing from the terrorists. “It was an unfortunate incident.I think some ppl have tried to give it a spin by saying that CRPF took him out of the vehicle and shot him. It’s totally untrue,” he says.
The CRPF/security personnel have no reason to randomly kill a man, especially when they are in middle of an encounter with terrorists. The gun-wielding terrorists, however, have a reason to kill at will – jihad. However, for the spinmasters and terrorist sympathisers at The Wire, they would use a little child who went through such a traumatising event just hours prior to whitewash the terrorists.
