In a horrific incident on Wednesday in Lakhimpur Kheri, two accused named Sohail and Junaid dragged two Dalit girls aged 15 and 17 to the sugarcane field and brutally raped them. The girls were later murdered and hanged on a tree with their dupattas.
Immediately after the incident was reported, “concerned” journalists started wondering why the Dalit identity of the victims is not being highlighted while reporting the crime as they hoped to give the crime a caste colour.
It’s also important to mention the caste which is missing from this report. 2 Minor Girls, Sisters, Found Hanging From Tree In UP’s Lakhimpur https://t.co/lC6jWO3JLA via @ndtv
— Saba Naqvi (@_sabanaqvi) September 14, 2022
Alleged journalist Samriddhi K Sakunia also joined in the concern expressed by Naqvi and found it bizarre that in NDTV’s reporting, the first priority wasn’t to highlight the caste of the victim girls.
It’s bizzare to see platforms like NDTV still thinks that caste isn’t to be mentioned in a rape case!
— Samriddhi K Sakunia (@Samriddhi0809) September 14, 2022
However, the concern over the caste of the victims and the resultant conversation between the two journalists came to an abrupt end as the identity of the perpetrators of the crime came to the fore. Uttar Pradesh police shared that they have arrested six persons for the crime, named Junaid, Sohail, Arif, Hafiz, Karimuddin and Chhotu (Gautam). Once it was clear that this can’t be turned into a caste crime, the conversation over the caste angle in the crime was over.
When other netizens asked why the duo aren’t continuing with the conversation any longer, Sakunia flippantly dismissed them as trolls, and added multiple laughing emojis to show how seriously she was actually taking this brutal crime.
Samriddhi K Sakunia was arrested by Tripura Police for spreading fake news
Last year, on November 13, Tripura Police had detained journalists Samriddhi Sakunia and Swarna Jha, for publishing fake news to spread communal violence. They were arrested and presented in the court in Gomti district, where they were granted bail. Sakunia had published a series of tweets that allegedly showed vandalized mosques in Tripura.
In one of the videos she had posted, Sakunia claimed that the burnt book was Quran. When Tripura Police approached the person she referred to in the video, he denied the claims of the book being Quran. On questioning Sakunia over the phone about the same, Sakunia allegedly refused to present any evidence to support her claims.
