“Not an iota of truth”, YJ Dastoor, Additional Solicitor General (ASG) of the Calcutta High Court, has demanded that the Editor of ‘The Times of India’ withdraw a report and apologise for incorrectly reporting developments in the ongoing West Bengal post-poll violence proceedings before the Calcutta High Court, reports Law Beat.
BREAKING: ASG Dastoor calls upon Editor of @timesofindia to immediately retract a report & apologise for wrongly reporting developments in the ongoing Bengal Violence cases before Calcutta HC viz. submissions of CBI that there existed “no proof in 21 rape cases mentioned by NHRC”
— LawBeat (@LawBeatInd) January 4, 2022
Dastoor stated that there is no truth in the TOI report published on January 4 that was headlined: “Post-poll violence in Bengal: No proof in 21 rape, rape-attempt cases mentioned by NHRC, CBI says”.
The ASG’s letter to TOI read: “The proceedings in the post-poll violence matters, which were taken up for hearing by the Hon’ble High Court at Calcutta on January 3, 2022, have been reported in The Times of India, Calcutta Edition dated January 4, 2022 and in your web edition dated 4.1.2022 respectively. Unfortunately, the said reports contain not an iota of truth with regard to the statements allegedly made on behalf of the C.B.I. None of the statements as reported in the aforesaid two articles were made on behalf of the C.B.I. in the hearing yesterday.
In fact, the headlines and the facts and figures mentioned in your said report are absolutely untrue. It is a cause of great concern that such false reports in a sensitive matter have been published by a newspaper of such repute. It would be in the fitness of things to immediately publish a retraction as to the authenticity of the facts contained in the said reports, as published by you, as also to publically apologize for the same”.
YJ Dastoor asked the TOI editor to immediately pull down its malicious article and issue an apology for the same.
Times of India attempts to downplay West Bengal post-poll violence by tweaking headline
Earlier in the day, OpIndia reported how TOI attempted to downplay the brutal post-poll violence in Bengal after the assembly elections where Mamata Banerjee won with a thumping majority with its article published on January 4 that was headlined: “Post-poll violence in Bengal: No proof in 21 rape, rape-attempt cases mentioned by NHRC, CBI says”.
By the headline of the Times of India report, it would seem to the reader that in 21 cases of rape, no proof has been found and therefore, the cases were supposedly fake. However, that is not the truth.
Essentially, the CBI moved 21 cases of rape or attempted rape that occurred during the West Bengal post-poll violence to a state-formed SIT in order to acquire additional evidence because it was unable to locate enough in these cases.
However, by tweaking the headline, Times of India had attempted to infer that the CBI was unable to find any evidence in the charges of rape during the post-election violence in West Bengal. The insinuation of such a headline for the reader is clear – no such crime occurred.
In the article itself, the slant that Times of India attempted to peddle was rather evident. In the first paragraph itself, TOI called the post-poll violence that occurred in West Bengal “alleged” violence. It was clear that by using the word “alleged”, Times of India was signalling to the readers that the violence, so far, is only an allegation and that no proof has been found for the violence yet.
Times of India further subtly raised doubts of the veracity of the post-poll violence in Bengal by putting the phrase “murder cases” under inverted commas, insinuating that the murders were mere allegations and that the veracity of the violence has not been authenticated yet.
The propaganda TOI tried to peddle, however, did not go unnoticed by the ASG of the Calcutta High Court who, in turn, asked the TOI editor to immediately retract the report both from the print and the web addition and issue a public apology for the same.
