On 17th December 2022, The Citizen published an article written by Dr. Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam that profiles Nirjhari Sinha, one of the directors of Pravda Media Foundation – the parent company of propaganda peddling website Alt News. While profiling Nirjhari Sinha, the article attempts to glorify her husband Mukul Sinha, comfortably ignoring his role in spreading misinformation about the Godhra carnage that sparked the 2002 Gujarat riots.
What is there in the article?
The article starts with the Sinha couple’s work with Physical Research Laboratory (PRL), and their initial urge to work for the poor that took birth in the PRL. The profile also has a statement from Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha, as he details how his mother stood firmly with his father Mukul Sinha, and his decisions. Dr. Rositta Joseph Valiyamattam calls the Sinha couple “crusaders for justice, peace, and truth – who built a wonderful, life-long mission of social service impacting the lives of hundreds and thousands”.
While glorifying Mukul Sinha for his activities after the Gujarat riots in 2002, sparked because of the Godhra carnage in which 59 innocent Hindus were burnt alive by an Islamist mob, The Citizen hails Mukul Sinha and Nirjhari Sinha and credits them for 28th February being celebrated as the Communal Harmony Day. It conveniently forgets the couple’s role in spreading lies about the root cause of the 2002 Gujarat riots.
Mukul Sinha – an ‘activist’ for Gujarat riots – is actually a liar for Godhra carnage
There were a number of actors playing their role in changing the outlook of the horrifying incident that sparked the riots. It has been over 20 years since the train carrying Karsewaks from Ayodhya was burnt in Godhra, Gujarat, by a Muslim mob. 59 Hindus were burnt alive, including women and children. The propagandists tried their level best to paint the incident differently to save the murderous Muslim mob from facing any criticism from the public. Mukul Sinha and Nirjhari Sinha were among the frontline propaganda peddlers who spread the lies.
For the media and the activists like the Sinha couple, Teesta Setalvad, and others who tried to whitewash the Godhra carnage, it was almost justified that these men, women, and children were murdered simply because they were Hindus, because they were returning from Ayodhya and because they chanted Jai Shree Ram while returning from a place where they wanted their Ram Mandir built. It was the duty of the media to report how the Muslim mob burnt Hindus to death. However, they were more bothered about being politically correct than standing with the unvarnished truth of how Hindus had been massacred.
Role of Mukul Sinha in spreading false information about Godhra riots
Mukul Sinha is the father of Alt News co-founder Pratik Sinha. Known for his immense hate for Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Sinha left no stone unturned to spread false information about the Gujarat riots of 2002.
The real story of the Godhra train burning incident
Justice Nanavati-Mehta Committee report [pdf] talks about how the Godhra carnage took place. Right after the Godhra platform and boundary, there is a road and a locality named ‘Signal Falia.’ “It extends up to the culvert and goes further towards A cabin. It is a locality mainly inhabited by Ghanchi Muslims,” the report mentions. When the train arrived, a lot of unauthorized vendors, mainly Ghanchi Muslims, would come on the platform and sell snacks, cold drinks, bidis, etc.
The report further states that the train arrived at the platform at 7:43 AM as it was running about 5 hours late, and there was a halt of about 5 minutes. In its evidence portion, the report cites media reports from February 28, 2002, the day after the carnage, where leading mainstream media had reported that a mob had set Hindus on fire. They mentioned how Hindus were returning from karseva and how the mob set the train coaches on fire with petrol.
The Times of India had mentioned how the train was stopped at Signal Falia, where someone had pulled the chain, and after the initial pelting of stones on coach S6 and S7, windows were broken, and petrol bombs were thrown inside. The Indian Express, too, carried eyewitness statements on how the mob had set the coach ablaze after pelting stones.
How did the conspiracy theories come to be, denying justice to Hindu victims?
As evident, barring the usual whitewashing, there was consensus that it was a mob that had set fire to the train, causing the brutal massacre of 59 Hindus. While the media might not have put the details in the headline to be politically correct, there was no other theory that was peddled about how the Hindus died. It was only later that these theories emerged.
Mukul Sinha’s Jan Sangharsh Manch and other ‘liberals’ and ‘activists’ fought tooth and nail to portray the eyewitnesses of the Godhra carnage liars, as evidenced in the Nanavati-Mehta Commission Report. They went to lengths to create various narratives like ‘fire was started from inside,’ ‘short circuit,’ ‘spontaneous scuffle,’ ‘Karsevaks raised provocative Jai Shri Ram slogans’ (20 years later, Jai Shri Ram is ‘Hindu terrorist war cry’ and Allahu Akbar is ‘voice of courage’ as per the same set of ‘liberals’). Mainstream media and politicians were complicit in making the world think that the Hindus burnt alive on the train did not matter.
“No person had suggested for quite a long time that fire in coach S/6 of Sabarmati Express train was caused in any other manner,” the Commission report said. Except, in response to this, a member of Jan Sangharsh Manch, a ‘civil rights organization’ started by ‘activist-lawyer’ Mukul Sinha, filed a statement and questioned the criminal conspiracy angle of the state government and claimed that after the ‘evidence’ collected by him, it “appeared to him that burning of coach S/6 was because of the spontaneous scuffle and fight that had taken place between Ramsevaks and Muslim vendors on the platform of Godhra railway station and not because of any conspiracy hatched earlier.” Mukul Sinha’s son, Pratik Sinha, now runs the propaganda website ‘Alt News,’ which regularly whitewashes crimes committed by Islamists.
Mukul Sinha took a garb of Jan Sangharsh Manch to hide his political aspirations
Mukul Sinha was a scientist turned “activist.” He was a physicist working with the Physical Research Laboratory in Ahmedabad. In 1988, he obtained a law degree and founded ‘Jan Sangharsh Manch,’ a ‘civil rights organization’ along with his wife, Nirjhari Sinha. The leadership of Jan Sangharsh Manch also founded the New Socialist Movement, which was registered as a political party with the Election Commission in 2007. Mukul Sinha had also contested elections in the past and lost.
Alt News and Pratik Sinha carry the lie-peddling legacy of Mukul Sinha
Mukul Sinha, along with his son Pratik Singh used to run an online rag called “Truth of Gujarat,” which basically spread lies about the carnage of Hindus and tried to blame the victims for their own death. Essentially, Sinha senior, with a bunch of ‘like-minded’ propagandists, would float theories on the 2002 Godhra carnage and subsequent riots in Gujarat.
In 2004, pro-Congress ‘activist’ Shabnam Hashmi organized a seminar in Delhi, “Rebuilding Justice and Hope in Gujarat: The Agenda Ahead.” Amongst those present in the seminar were: actresses Sharmila Tagore and Nandita Das, lawyers Indira Jaisingh and Nitya Ramakrishnan, and journalists Praful Bidwai and Rajdeep Sardesai, along with many known critics of the then Gujarat CM Narendra Modi. They all tried to figure out ways to ‘fix’ Modi legally, where Sinha gave a presentation to ‘prove’ the Muslim mob setting the train to fire was ‘false’ and that the fire was an ‘accident.’
This kind of propaganda was seeded through the ‘truth of Gujarat’ by Mukul Sinha along with his son Pratik.
Pratik Sinha, as mentioned earlier, now runs another propaganda outlet Alt News that whitewashes the crimes carried out by Islamists and often ‘gives context’ to crimes against Hindus which further waters down the crimes. When not busy whitewashing crimes of Islamists, Alt News ‘fact-checks’ memes and satirical pieces to stay relevant. Nirjhari Sinha (Wife of Mukul Sinha and mother of Pratik Sinha), Pratik Sinha, and Murlidhar Deomurari – all associated with Alt News are members of Jan Sangharsh Manch. Nirjari and Murlidhar are directors of Alt News.
