Whether it is government officers or politicians, they are not afraid to question anyone, they never hesitate to land on ground zero with cameras and mics in tow. Sometimes, they would question the quality of roads and bridge construction, sometimes they enter the police stations and talk about policing methods, sometimes they become the voice of the students, and sometimes of the common man.
People may have different opinions regarding their methods, but thousands and thousands of people actually listen to them. These YouTubers are the reason why, in recent times, the problems of Bihar got discussed at the national level even though the mainstream media keeps ignoring those problems.
But now, when Ram Navami Shobha Yatras have been targeted in many cities of Bihar, these voices of Bihar are neither heard nor seen anywhere. After all, why are these fearless voices not being heard from the ground zero of Bihar Sharif and Sasaram? We are talking about those YouTubers who had emerged as ground zero’s voice on every issue related to Bihar in recent times. This includes names like Manish Kashyap, Ravi Bhatt, Nibha Singh, Abhishek Tiwari, Abhishek Mishra, Suraj, and Ravi Ranjan.
Surprisingly, none of them are reporting the recent violence in Bihar. Manish Kashyap, who runs a YouTube channel named ‘Sach Tak News’, is in the custody of the Tamil Nadu Police. The name of Ravi Bhatt’s channel may be ‘Time of Ayodhya’, but his channel focuses primarily on Bihar. Bhatt is currently being investigated by the Economic Offenses Wing (EOU) of Bihar Police and they are searching for him. Seeing the condition of these two, the remaining YouTubers have kept their distance from news reports on Bihar Sharif and Sasaram.
One such YouTuber from Bihar told OpIndia on the condition of anonymity, “We all know that the cases against Manish Kashyap have no merit. Sooner or later, he will get relief from the court. But the treatment meted out to him was meant to scare people like us. It was always easy for the government to control the mainstream media, but we also used to bring to the fore that news that the government did not want to gain prominence. News that did not find a place in mainstream media. The action was taken against Manish Kashyap only to suppress the people running the local YouTube channels in Bihar.”
He further said, “We are all scared. In this environment, if things are shown from Bihar Sharif and Sasaram, then no one knows when the police will implicate in which case. Still, we have been reporting across the state. But channels like ‘Bihar Darshan News’ which has been covering Sasaram’s local news, also do not want to get into trouble seeing Manish Kashyap’s condition. They have not reported on the violence on Ram Navami and what happened later.”
We also searched the YouTube channel of ‘Bihar Darshan News’ to verify this claim. The last video that was uploaded on this channel was related to the Dehri Municipal Council elections. Before that, there was news of taking out a grand procession on motorcycles. However, we could not find any news related to the attack on the Ram Navami procession on this channel.
Similarly, Manish Kashyap’s ‘Sach Tak News’ channel which has more than 66 lakh subscribers, doesn’t have any new video for over two weeks. The last video is the one that was released on his behalf before his surrender. It is worth mentioning that Manish Kashyap faced legal troubles after reporting cases related to the alleged violence with workers from Bihar in Tamil Nadu. It may be noted that reports about the alleged violence were also published in the mainstream media, including several national dailies. It is also worth knowing that just before the Tamil Nadu controversy, Manish Kashyap had reported on the Bihar Police allegedly beating up an army soldier.
We could not find any report on the recent violence on The Abhishek Tiwari Show either, a channel with 2.23 lakh subscribers. Nibha Singh of ‘RN News’, popularly known as Reporter Nibha, has more than 10 lakh subscribers, but we did not see any report related to the Ram Navami violence on that channel either. Other popular Bihari channels like Samarth Rathore, Principal of News, Sach Bihar, Kaabil News etc also maintained their distance from the news of the violence.
Even more disappointing than their disappearance from ground zero, is the fear within them, due to which many of them refused to respond even when contacted by OpIndia. Due to the lack of coverage from local sources, the picture is not completely clear regarding the real situation of places like Bihar Sharif and Sasaram.
For instance, the Bihar Police claimed that the situation in Bihar Sharif and Sasaram was normal and under control. But a few hours after that claim, the news of a bomb being hurled in Sasaram’s Mochi Tola area came out on Monday (April 3, 2023) morning. The mainstream media’s reports quoted locals as claiming that four people on a motorcycle came and hurled the bomb and left. Police said a few hours later that it was just firecrackers. However, what the people of that locality have to say about this claim of the police, we don’t know yet.
Similarly, videos surfaced of people fleeing the violence-affected areas, which the police termed as rumours. Many media houses later deleted their tweets related to this news about people fleeing. On April 1, 2023, there was also news of a blast near the mosque in Sasaram. The police called it an explosion while preparing a bomb in the compound of a house, but did not inform whose house it was, in whose premises the bomb was being made, who are the people arrested in the case etc.
In a state where journalists are killed for publishing news about ‘bahubalis’ protected by people in power, in a state where Lalu Prasad Yadav, a former Chief Minister, and a convict, publicly told a journalist, “You will fall after two punches”, in that state, these voices had exposed the system in front of the common people. Perhaps this is the reason why it is being asked in social media that the intention with which action was taken against Manish Kashyap, has the Bihar government been successful in that?
