The investigation into the Delhi anti-Hindu riots is just about heating up with over 700 FIRs and several chargesheets filed. With the arrest of Umar Khalid, Tahir Hussain, Khalid Saifi, the Pinjra Tod members, Congress leader Ishrat Jahan and several others, the Delhi Police has now filed the first chargesheet that detailed the conspiracy which was hatched to burn Delhi.
The chargesheet filed in FIR No. 59/2020 details how the conspiracy started to take shape right from the 5th of December 2019 and the masterminds, Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others started fomenting trouble. The chargesheet also details the roles of others and though elements like Yogendra Yadav have not been booked yet, his name has cropped up in the chargesheet from the very beginning of the conspiracy, on the 8th of December when he held a secret meeting with Sharjeel Imam, Umar Khalid and others.
Chargesheet in FIR No 59/2020, that details the entire conspiracy, spans almost over 17,000 pages. The media, however, has cherry-picked information to peddle lies and half-truths to suit their narrative.
One such untruth that the entire media propagated was that the chargesheet filed detailing the conspiracy terms Kapil Mishra as a ‘whistleblower’.
This untruth was propagated by several media outlets and journalists – from NDTV to Bar and Bench and propaganda outlets like The Quint.
#DelhiRiots | Cops describe hate speech neta as ‘whistleblower’@Saurabh_Unmute reports pic.twitter.com/h4djtOC2eY
— NDTV (@ndtv) September 23, 2020
Coming up on NDTV, the Delhi Police riots chargesheet describes the BJP's inciter-in-chief Kapil Mishra as a 'whistleblower.'@Saurabh_Unmute with the details.
— Sreenivasan Jain (@SreenivasanJain) September 23, 2020
NDTV described Kapil Mishra as a “hate speech neta” and claimed that the Delhi Police has called him a whistleblower in the chargesheet.
India Today followed suit and picked up exactly the same lie. In an article headlined, “Delhi riots: Is Kapil Mishra a whistleblower? Police chargesheet indicates so”, India Today claimed that “The Delhi Police seems to be saying that the conspirators were creating a “false narrative” to protect themselves. It also hints that the BJP leader Kapil Mishra could be one of the “whistleblowers” in the case of the Delhi riots”.
The Quint too quotes the chargesheet saying, “Indicative chats corroborating the fear of conspirators from being exposed. Conspirators resorted to shifting blame by creating a false narrative and threatened the whistleblowers”, insinuating that Kapil Mishra might have been the whistleblower the Delhi Riots Chargesheet spoke about.
Bar and Bench, that is regarded as a reliable source of authentic information on legal affairs also, maliciously peddled the same lie.
The lies being peddled found resonance with Congress leader and their trolls as well. Several came out to peddle the exact same lie as reported by the media.
Kapil Mishra, the 'whistleblower' in Delhi riots case? pic.twitter.com/yXM9LEMFAK
— Ruchira Chaturvedi (@RuchiraC) September 23, 2020
What is the truth? Has the Delhi riots chargesheet called Kapil Mishra a whistleblower?
All the media reports that have claimed that the Delhi riots chargesheet named Kapil Mishra as a ‘whistleblower’ have used the following screenshot to make that claim.
This image from Bar and Bench is the same image that has also been used by India Today to claim that the chargesheet calls Kapil Mishra as a “whistleblower”.
However, there is an important part of the same section that has been conveniently left out, deliberately or otherwise, by the media at large.
The chargesheet first says, “Indicative chats corroborating the fear of conspirators from being exposed. Conspirators resorted to shifting blame by creating a false narrative and threatened the whistleblowers”. Further, it also says that this has been corroborated by protected witnesses.
However, what is clinching is how the media cropped the image and left out a crucial part that explains how whistleblowers were being threatened.
First, one has to notice that the Delhi Police says “creating false narrative AND threatened whistleblower”. There are two elements to this. First, is the creation of the false narrative and second, of threatening whistleblowers.
In this section, the Delhi Police first shared screenshots of chats from the group “Delhi Protest Support Group” (DPSG) where Khalid Saifi, Rahul Roy etc were talking about getting an FIR filed against Kapil Mishra.
What is to be noticed is that the chat in the DSPG group took place at 24th February 1:00 AM when the violence had already erupted. The media, however, has conveniently ignored the entire 700 plus pages that detail the entire conspiracy since the 5th of December and focus on this part.
Coming back to the chargesheet itself, when the police quoted the chats pertaining to Kapil Mishra, it was indicating how the engineers of the riots who have even admitted their role in the conspiracy, like Khalid Saifi were attempting to implicate Mishra to shift the focus from themselves and create a “false narrative”.
The chats where “whistleblowers were being threatened” comes later in the same section where Kapil Mishra has no role to play.
Here is the part that the media conveniently cropped out.
In this chat, after an entire day of rioting, Rahul Roy who was the creator of the DSPG group was threatening people about the messages from the group being leaked. What our subsequent report will show is that people within the DSPG group had admitted that the riots were instigated by the Muslims and the people in the DSPG group itself and that chat happened before the 25th.
Subsequently, an argument had ensued between Rahul Roy and the concerned people who had raised objection to their lives being endangered by the shenanigans of groups like Pinjra Tod and other Muslim masterminds.
It was only after that that on the 25th, Rahul Roy had threatened people from “leaking messages” from the group.
It is to be kept in mind that the Delhi Police has several protested witnesses who have corroborated that whistleblowers and those who raised objection to the orchestrated violence were being threatened and silence.
Thus, what the media has craftily done in this case is taken an over 3000-page final report and quoted only the part where the chargesheet mentions Kapil Mishra and that too, quoted out of context while shielding the chat that was sent by Rahul Roy. It is almost as if the media simply searched for the word “Kapil Mishra” and weaved a false narrative out of it without even reading the entire chargesheet which is excruciatingly detailed.
Rahul Roy and wife Saba Dewan were earlier summoned by the Delhi Police in connection with masterminding the Delhi Riots. The DSPG group was started by short-film maker Rahul Roy and he is being investigated as one of the key conspirators of the riots.
Delhi Police had also rebut fake claim of Kapil Mishra being a whistleblower
The Delhi Police had also taken to Twitter to counter the fake claim made by the NDTV report terming Kapil Mishra as a whistleblower based on the chargesheet filed.
“Perhaps the narrative of the anchor would have been complete if the Delhi Police had not taken the full statement of Kapil Mishra. But probe does not happen in the studio in front of the camera. Hurt by the detailed statement of Kapil Mishra given on record, the anchor has tried to mislead the audience by ignoring the true whistle-blowers (who are protected witnesses)”, the statement added.
The police also rebutted the claim made by NDTV that riots had started when Kapil Mishra was present at Maujpur. The investigation has shown that the riots and stone-pelting had started at around 11 AM on 23rd February as part of a well-planned conspiracy. The first injured in the riots was admitted at the hospital at 12:15 PM, while Kapil Mishra had reached Maujpur at 3.30 PM on that day. This shows that anti-CAA protestors had started attacking the public and police in the morning of 23rd February itself before Kapil Mishra reached Maujpur.
‘The anchor has maliciously tried to weave a fiction by hiding these facts. But NDTV’s own report that the DCP was wearing anti-riot gear and stone pelting was going on, knowingly or unknowingly supports the version mentioned in the charge sheet that stone-pelting had started around 11 AM itself’, the statement by Delhi Police further added.
