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Journalist claims he was assaulted and threatened to be killed for filing case against Kejriwal

OpIndia Staff
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Journalist claims he was assaulted and threatened to be killed for filing case against Kejriwal

We had reported last month how an NGO, which had filed a complaint against Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal and his brother-in-law Surender Kumar Bansal, was getting threats from various anonymous numbers. The NGO had registered a complaint about alleged irregularities in the contracts given to Bansal by the PWD. It was also alleged that in 2015-16, Bansal failed to complete certain contracts but got the whole payment due to the pressure exerted by Kejriwal.

A journalist named Viplava Awasthi working for Samachar Plus, has also claimed to have filed a corruption case against Kejriwal, his brother-in-law and others. And he too has complained about receiving threats. In fact, things took a serious turn in his case when he was assaulted and his car battered by unknown assailants, who threatened him not to appear in court on 25th February when the case comes up for hearing. They also threatened to kill him if he pursued the matter further.

Journalist’s car smashed by assailants

The incident occurred in Noida near Delhi at around 8 PM on 22nd February, when Viplava Awasthi was returning home from work. A dark silver colored Swift car carrying three passengers overtook his car and two of them stepped out and made him stop his car. One started to vandalize his car while the other grabbed him by his throat and threatened to kill him if he attended the court proceedings against the Delhi Chief Minister and his brother-in-law on 25th February, Awasthi claims.

After the incident, the journalist proceeded to file an FIR against the unknown assailants. The FIR mentions that he was abused, assaulted, and threatened to be killed if he appeared in the court for the corruption case against Arvind Kejriwal:

Kejriwal supporters threatening people?
Copy of the FIR filed

Journalist’s claims were also supported by a Delhi based advocate:

While only police investigations will reveal who were the assailants and if they were working on someone’s orders, this does raise the question as to why those who talk about corruption related to Arvind Kejriwal receive threats from certain quarters.

Mega celebrations lined up for Mahashivratri and here’s where you can watch them

OpIndia Staff
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Mega celebrations lined up for Mahashivratri and here’s where you can watch them

Maha Shivratri is celebrated in the honour of Lord Shiva, with devotees observing day-long fasts. The term Maha Shivratri is derived from the three words – Maha, Shiva, Ratri. As the name suggests, this auspicious event is celebrated at the night, and not in the day. This year too, mega events have been planned for a grand celebration of this grand night.

This year, Prime Minister Narendra Modi will unveil a 112-ft tall face of Adiyogi — the Source of Yoga, designed and consecrated by Sadhguru, founder, Isha Foundation, on Mahashivratri on February 24 at the Isha Yoga Center, Coimbatore, Tamil Nadu.

The statue weighs 500 tonnes and is made of steel. It took 2.5 years for the team to design the statue and it was built in about eight months. The statue is 112-feet tall as Adiyogi opened up 112 possibilities for human beings to reach their ultimate potential. The Isha Foundation also claims that there is a scientific significance as there are 112 chakras in the human system, with which one can work to explore 112 dimensions of life.

A livestream of the event will be available at the below link from 6pm onwards:

Besides the Isha Foundation, there is also a grand event by the Art Of Living foundation. Lakhs of devotees from about a 100 countries are expected to arrive at the Art of Living International Center, Bangalore, in presence of, Gurudev Sri Sri Ravi Shankar.

The Maha Rudra Puja is expected to start at 8pm today, followed by Satsang and Prasadam, and the celebrations will continue into the wee hours of the morning on 25th February.

A livestream of the celebrations will be available below from 7.30pm onwards:

How the Media tried to hide the Left’s violence in the Ramjas College incident

OpIndia Staff
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How the Media tried to hide the Left’s violence in the Ramjas College incident

On 22nd February, the students of Ramjas College, protested and forced the College in DU to withdraw its invitation to Umar Khalid who has been accused of shouting anti-national slogans at JNU last February. Also to cement his supposed anti-national credentials, after the death of terrorist Burhan Wani; Khalid had put out a Facebook post openly supporting him.

This invitation episode though wasn’t without incident and violence seemed to have erupted between the leftist AISA (All India student’s association) and RSS affiliated ABVP. While the AISA version is now public, here is the ABVP’s version of the events. The media though almost predictably was quick to paint the ABVP as the main barbaric aggressor and the Left as the unfortunate victims.

But now thanks to Social Media, details have started to emerge of how the media conveniently ignored the various acts of violence the Left committed. BJP leader Nupur Sharma claimed to have received images from a DU professor which supposedly depicted atrocities committed by the Leftists on ABVP members.


A leftist twitter user was posting moving accounts of how ABVP heaped atrocities on them and in one tweet also claimed they (Left) took a moral high ground and chose not to retaliate. Maybe taking a break from playing the victim card the user then gleefully replied to a murderous troll about how an ABVP activist was thrice beaten by the leftist students and claimed that they (Leftists) outnumbered the ABVP guys by a whopping 10:1 ratio. This was reported in this tweet.

Also to make matters worse, The Hindu decided to continue its legacy of publishing fake news and depicted the SFI activist in the above picture who was assaulting students as a ABVP member.


And here’s another proof that he is an SFI activist.

And if the media could completely disregard the violence perpetrated by the Left they could certainly disregard the opportunity used by these students to shout anti-national slogans:


How media lies have created a villain out of Patanjali for its tax-exempt status

OpIndia Staff
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How media lies have created a villain out of Patanjali for its tax-exempt status

When the media reports news which is completely fabricated or untrue, it is easy to call out their bluff. But when a news report has even a grain of truth in it, wrapped by a series of lies, it becomes harder to determine whether the news report is true or false.

The recent news report of Baba Ramdev’s “Patanjali” winning tax exempt status is a similar case. A few days back, media had reported that the Income Tax Appellate Tribunal (ITAT) had given tax exempt status to Baba Ramdev’s Patanjali Yogpeeth (a public charitable trust). The ITAT is a quasi judicial institution and is free from any political or governmental control.

Headlines of many news reports though only mentioned that “Patanjali” (not including “Yogpeeth”) had gained tax exempt status. The difference between “Patanjali Yogpeeth” and any other name involving “Patanjali” is that Patanjali Yogpeeth is a charitable trust. While a charitable trust is not restricted from conducting business, the business has to be incidental to its charitable cause and there are other conditions which need to be met in order to claim exemption.

In the current case, the exemption was given to Patanjali Yogpeeth, which is involved in providing medical relief and imparting education by propagating yoga. However, due to misleading headlines, there was confusion whether the exemption was given to the Yogpeeth, or the FMCG companies that have “Patanjali” in their names, most notably “Patanjali Ayurved limited”.

In fact, 2 articles on DailyO (a publishing platform by India Today that publishes anything and everything), with extremely shoddy research, assumed that the FMCG arm had gotten the exemption, and proceeded to link this with BJP and Modi (even though the ITAT is quasi judicial):

While the mainstream media continued to spread this concoction of misinformation and lies, an officer from the Indian Revenue Service clarified on Twitter that the exemption was not given to the FMCG company:



In fact, a quick scan on the list of companies with which Baba Ramdev’s aide Acharya Balakrishna is associated reveals that the FMCG businesses are being operated under various companies, many of which have “Patanjali” in their names, but a media person should be educated enough to realise that it’s not the same as “Patanjali Yogpeeth”:

Public database of companies where Acharya Balkrishna is listed as a Director

OpIndia.com also talked to Acharya Balkrishna, who confirmed that Patanjali Ayurved limited, which is the flagship company for the FMCG business, did not have any tax-exempt status either in the past or currently, nor is there any plan to seek such status in future.

“We pay taxes like any other for-profit company after properly maintaining our business records as required by the law,” Acharya Balkrishna told us on phone from Haridwar, where Patanjali Ayurved limited is headquartered.

“There is no tax-exempt status for our FMCG business, and such reports are either malicious or born out of lack of information,” he added, “We are among the highest tax payers from Uttarakhand, and we are proud to contribute to nation-building.”

He further clarified that Patanjali Yogpeeth trust had no commercial relationship with Patanjali Ayurved limited and there was no question of using the trust to save taxes for the FMCG company.

“On the contrary, a part of the profit of Patanjali Ayurved is donated to the trust so that we can carry out our charitable works like education, relief operations, research, medical services, spiritual activities, langar, and other things. If we are declaring profits, obviously we are paying taxes on them!” he said.

Sheila Dikshit’s U Turn: Rahul moves from mature to not yet mature in a few months

OpIndia Staff
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Sheila Dikshit’s U Turn: Rahul moves from mature to not yet mature in a few months

Former Delhi CM Sheila Dikshit might have been relegated to behind the scenes action now, but she keeps popping into the news. The latest reason for her name to come up, is her comment on Rahul Gandhi in a recent interview. Sheila Dikshit was asked why the Congress is sinking in spite of Rahul Gandhi campaigning vigorously. In her answer, she said:

….And please remember Rahul is still not mature, his age does not allow him to be mature. He is what… in his forties. Please give him time.

So Sheila Dikshit feels 46-year-old Rahul Gandhi is still not mature, although there have been many efforts by media to declare that Rahul has “come of age“. On the other hand, we have Maharashtra CM Devendra Fadnavis, who is just a month older than Rahul Gandhi, but has matured much faster, enabling him to lead BJP to a resounding success in the recently concluded Maharashtra Civic elections.

But Sheila Dikshit’s realisation that Rahul Gandhi has not matured is actually quite a recent development. Her opinion on Rahul Gandhi was quite different a few months ago. On 7th November 2016, in another interview, Dikshit had remarked that Rahul Gandhi had “emerged as a mature leader”:

Suddenly he has emerged as a mature leader, somebody who takes up issues which belong to the common people….. his thinking is very very good.

Of course the above statement came when Sheila Dikshit was still the Congress’s CM candidate in Uttar Pradesh. Subsequently, once Congress allied with the Samajwadi Party, she was dropped like a hot potato.

Also, this statement of Rahul being a mature leader, was before this same mature leader Rahul Gandhi had raised the issue of the Sahara Birla diaries, alleging corruption on BJP. Rahul had not realised that the diaries, if considered as gospel truth (which the courts did not), also implicated his own UP CM face Sheila Dikshit, as she was also mentioned in the diaries. Dikshit had then junked the diaries as “hear-say” but the Congress left her to fight on her own.

Thus, as of today, in Sheila Dikshit’s books, Rahul Gandhi is a person who has not matured. Finally she seems to agree with what BJP leaders have been saying for so long. Finance Minister Arun Jaitley said this in 2015:

In early 2016, even the Prime Minister of India had realised that some people do not mature even as they grow older:

Now that Sheila Dikshit has gained enlightenment on the status of Rahul Gandhi’s maturity, one has to see if she gains any more enlightenment about the Congress as a whole.

Maharashtra Civic Elections Results: The writing on the wall

Amit Kelkar
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Maharashtra Civic Elections Results: The writing on the wall

The results of the hotly contested Maharashtra civic elections are pouring in as we speak, even as most results have firmed up. The results include those of some key cities like the financial capital of India, Mumbai, RSS bastion Nagpur and also of Pune, among other local bodies. Further, these elections saw a split in the ranks of the saffron forces, with Shiv Sena openly baying for BJP’s blood and vice versa.

According to psephology company CVoter, the final results for BMC i.e the Corporation which runs Mumbai, look like this:

Minor variations aside, this seems to be the final picture and it is clear that the city has rejected Congress and NCP. Shiv Sena, which had more than double the seats which BJP had in 2012, now has a slender lead of just 3-odd seats, thanks to a paltry growth of 9 seats, which is less than 10%. BJP on the other hand has zoomed to 81 from 31 seats, an increase of more than 250%.

BMC result throws an Odisha like picture, where the incumbent Sena has held its own, BJP has grown, and the opposition consisting of Congress and NCP among others has been blown away to smithereens. The Congress Mukt Bharat dream of BJP seems to be materialising.

Uddhav Thakeray has at least settled one debate: He can today claim that he is truly the rightful heir of Balasaheb Thakeray, since his cousin Raj Thakeray’s party has been left down in the dumps. This is the first BMC election led by Uddhav without the guidance of his father and he seems to have done a good job of rallying the cadre around him, ensuring that the Sena doesn’t wilt.

But if he looks beyond Mumbai, then the situation is bleak. The BJP has emerged out of the shadows of Big Brother Sena, and now is increasingly looking like the Big Brother itself. Come next assembly elections, the Sena will have yet another tough time in handling BJP’s seat demands, and we may end up seeing a repeat of the last elections.

Maharashtra CM Fadnavis can take heart from the fact that he has managed to increase BJP’s tally substantially in a city famed for its loyal Shiv Sena cadre. It must also be noted that because BMC elections clashed with the much bigger Uttar Pradesh elections, Fadnavis had to battle it out alone without much help from either BJP’s star campaigner PM Narendra Modi, or BJP’s master strategist Amit Shah. Fadnavis has emerged as the tallest leader in Maharashtra, and indeed western India. The favourable performance will add to his weight and will give him the confidence to deal with Shiv Sena with a tougher hand.

But there is more to Maharashtra than just Mumbai. The BJP has emerged victorious with a simple majority or just close to simple majority in places such as Pune, Pimpri Chinchwad, Nashik and Nagpur. The only setback for BJP can be considered to be the results in Beed, the constituency of Women and Child welfare Development Minister for Maharashtra, Pankaja Munde.

The dynamics of Sena-BJP both at centre and at the state will be interesting now. The Sena would overall be dejected that the BJP has trumped then in most locations and has managed to rise to unimaginable strengths in BMC. Before the elections, Shiv Sena had offered BJP a mere 60 seats, if they went in together for the polls. Now it appears neither of them can take control of BMC unless they ally together, or with the likes of Congress, or engineer a majority by horse-trading.

As for the rest, Congress needs to do some soul-searching for its disastrous performance. State after state it is being routed and is ceding ground to other parties especially BJP. There needs to be a bottom up rethinking of all the processes, the political positions it takes and the campaign strategies to ensure that they learn from this debacle

Media’s initial euphoria about Shiv Sena winning at expense of the BJP gets cut short

OpIndia Staff
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Media’s initial euphoria about Shiv Sena winning at expense of the BJP gets cut short

BMC elections votes were counted today and initial trends, though incomplete, suggested that Shiv Sena could win the elections with BJP finishing at the second place. Though both the parties are branded “saffron” and “communal” by the so-called left-liberal commentators and journalists, somehow they appeared to be supporting Shiv Sena over the BJP today.

This liberal love for the Shiv Sena came to the fore on Twitter as many in the Media ended up showering praises on the Shiv Sena and Uddhav Thackeray.

Now that the BJP has done almost as good as Shiv Sena in the BMC polls, following comments betray how these journalists lose objectivity in their enthusiasm to show BJP down:



Shekhar Gupta happily forgot that BJP had performed stunningly well against BJD in Odisha earlier this week.

Shiv Sena became a “secular” choice!
Shiv Sena was not to “secular” for the same people some time back (screenshots thanks to this tweet)

Researchers discovered new qualities in Shiv Sena:


Suddnely, Sena chief Uddhav Thackeray was “reluctantly” fundamentalist:


As if almost on cue after controversial journalist Barkha Dutt put out her tweet, Shiv Sena’s lead started diminishing and BJP began gaining ground in Mumbai. At the time of publishing of this report, BJP was just 3 seats behind while claiming support of 4 independent winners.


And obviously the people “thanked” Barkha Dutt for this!


And the hurt reportedly started showing on some Journalist’s faces:


So the Moral of the story is: Never jump the gun.

And as they say, even a broken clock shows the right time twice a day and today was Rana Ayyub’s day:

How ‘alternative facts’ were used by a ‘fact checker’ to show PM Modi in poor light

Subhash
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How ‘alternative facts’ were used by a ‘fact checker’ to show PM Modi in poor light

An article was published on Hindustan Times yesterday, which claimed to “fact check” the speech made by Prime Minister Narendra Modi in an election rally at Barabanki in Uttar Pradesh on February 16.

The article was written by someone working at an organisation called IndiaSpend, which OpIndia.com had earlier found lacking in their “fact check” rigour, and it appears that this article was another example of that.

The most notable aspect about the article is that the author couldn’t find a single claim made by PM Modi that was completely wrong (except one, which was ‘alternative facts’ by the author himself, as we’d see it later in this article), yet the article went on to claim that the speech was full of “half-truths” and “tall claims”.

In essence, the only “tall claim” was that the article was presented as “fact check”, and the “half-truths” were some of the claims made in the article. For example:

On crimes against Dalits:

Modi says – even the article quotes this – “Hindustan mein sabse zyada daliton par atyachaar agar kahin hote hai, to us pradesh ka naam hai Uttar Pradesh”. This, the article claims, is “wrong”.

This sentence clearly indicates that, in terms of absolute magnitude, Uttar Pradesh sees the highest number of crimes against Dalits. The article however assumes that PM meant the crime rate against SCs i.e. crimes reported per 100000 SC population, which although a valid indicator, is not what Modi himself was using in his statement.

It’s like a person saying that “Sachin Tendulkar has made the maximum runs” and some “fact checker” shouts “wrong” because Sachin is not the number one in batting averages.

Nonetheless, using this crime-rate indicator, the article makes a point that many other states have a higher crime rate than Uttar Pradesh against SCs. However, it is one thing to say Gujarat has a higher crime rate against SCs than Uttar Pradesh, and yet another to conclude Uttar Pradesh is safer for Dalits than Gujarat. The latter – the article concludes that Uttar Pradesh is “better place” for SCs than Gujarat – becomes a heavily contestable claim which ignores other possible factors that feed into this data.

The “fact-checker” assumes it is as easy or difficult for an SC to report a case against a dominant caste in Uttar Pradesh as it is in Gujarat. In a region infamous for its heavily caste-ridden and politically connected security apparatus, for an SC to file a case against a dominant community may be an uphill task. In fact, Modi himself mentions in this very speech that IndiaSpend refers to, that it is difficult for a Dalit to register cases in police stations in Uttar Pradesh.

Remember that in Uttar Pradesh, outside the cities and sometimes even within, politically connected strongmen and bahubalis rule the roost and even the police are not immune to such influences. Recently, there was a case of even the Supreme Court having to intervene and order the Uttar Pradesh Government to register an FIR in a case of alleged gangrape of a minor against a minister in Akhilesh’s cabinet.

Deriving conclusions by looking purely at the crime rate from a numbers-only perspective without contextualising it with ground realities may be misleading.

Further, Gujarat had a crime rate of 29.2 in 2013, 27.7 in 2014 and 25.7 in 2015 while Uttar Pradesh had 17.1 in 2013, 19.5 in 2014 and 20.2 in 2015. The rate in Gujarat is dipping gradually while the situation in Uttar Pradesh is going in the opposite direction, and this is something the article itself concedes.

This constant rise in crime rate against Dalits makes Uttar Pradesh a “better place” than Gujarat where it’s going down? The crime rate against SCs jumps from 15 in 2012 to 20.2 in 2015 – an increase of about 35% – a pretty damning indictment of Akhilesh’s governance actually.

On crop insurance:

The fact-checker observes, as opposed to Modi’s claim, that the Pradhan Mantri Fasal Bima Yojana (PMFBY) is not the first in covering natural calamity risks since the Weather-Based Crop Insurance Scheme (WBCIS) is already present to cover weather-related vagaries.

However, there is one key difference between the two schemes. What is unprecedented is that the PMFBY actually covers extremely localized calamities which the RUA (Reference Unit Area) based approach of the WBCIS does not – a nuance which a fact check should have covered since it claims WBCIS already did all that PMFBY does.

PMFBY states “For Risks of Localized calamities and Post-Harvest losses on account of defined peril, the Unit of Insurance for loss assessment shall be the affected insured field of the individual farmer”. WBCIS adopts an RUA-based approach where claims are studied based on conditions in the RUA than in the specific field of the insured individual farmer.

In this sense the PMFBY, surely has an important first up its sleeve whose value-add may be subtle on paper but can turn out to be a life and death question for an individual farmer whose field saw adverse natural conditions affect his prospects which an RUA-based insurance scheme may not consider since it considers weather conditions of the overall RUA to evaluate such a claim.

Shobhaa De body shames a cop with medical disorder, who didn’t let the disorder affect his duties

Hemant Bijapurkar
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Shobhaa De body shames a cop with medical disorder, who didn’t let the disorder affect his duties

Columnist Shobhaa De seems to have perfected the art of making controversial and insensitive statements in order to get public attention. This was very famously in display during the Rio Olympics when she decided to take an obnoxious dig at the Indian athletes and got universally panned for it.

Earlier in 2014, she had tweeted a tasteless statement when BJP leader Gopinath Munde passed away. Even otherwise, she has a long list of making inane comments on the microblogging website.

And now she has done it again. On Tuesday, when Mumbai was voting for municipal polls, she tweeted this:



Essentially she tried to crack a “joke” that Mumbai policemen were overweight (heavy) and that they were good for nothing. Most people panned her, because they didn’t approve of the body-shaming, while some others pointed out that such pictures are hardly any original witty quip. Mumbai Police also “corrected” her:


Shobhaa De acknowledged the tweet, but still ended up giving gyaan to the policeman to consult a ‘dietitian’, suggesting that the cop had some overeating issues::


Now the the cop, whose picture was shared by Shobhaa De, has spoken up.

His name is Daulatram Jogawat, and he has clarified that his weight gain was not because of over-eating, but because of Insulin imbalance, which he was inflicted with after having a gall bladder operation in 1993. He even got a bit emotional and asked Shobhaa De if she wanted to pay for his treatment if she cared so much about his appearance.

Reports suggest that Daulatram hasn’t let his illness come in the way of duty. He was praised by his department for his work during the Ujjain Simhasta. He is currently posted in Neemuch Police lines.

Daulatram who has studied till Higher Senior Secondary(HSS), hails from Ratlam and belongs to an underprivileged section of the society. He was first inducted in the police force on 1st January 1979 when he was only 19. He was promoted as an inspector in February 2015.

Source: MP Police’s Graduation list of inspectors (PDF link)

This whole affair is another lesson over the fact that how in this age of social media, many especially those associated with the media, outrage without first verifying a story and when their falsehood gets called out, prefer to conveniently hush up the matter.

In another case of a cop getting similarly slandered, in 2015 many news channels reported an amateur footage of a drunk cop in Delhi Metro. Outrage ensued, the cop was abused and suspended the next day. It was later found that he wasn’t drunk but had suffered a stroke leading to him losing his balance. The humiliation of the cop also resulted in his wife suffering a heart attack and having to recuperate in the hospital. He was found not guilty and reinstated two months later.

Bangalore child molestation shocker: Media apathy even as number of victims increase

OpIndia Staff
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Bangalore child molestation shocker: Media apathy even as number of victims increase

A few days back a chamcha of a politician battled another chamcha of the same politician by finally installing a chamcha of a chamcha as a Chief Minister by holding adult elected MLAs as prisoners. This was disgusting charade was enough for the entire national media to head down south and give us a running commentary of what was ensuing.

Not far from Chennai, but still very far from the ivory towers of Lutyens Delhi, in Bengaluru, parents of toddlers are living a nightmare and the coverage given to this incident by national media is almost non-existent.

A 3 year old girl was crying and sobbing to her parents for the last month, saying she did not want to go to her posh private pre-school in Marathahalli, franchises of which are all over the country, including your town. Friday last week, she came home and complained about pain in her private parts. When her parents repeatedly asked her if she had hurt herself, she informed that Manju Bhaiya in her school put his finger in her private parts. Manju Bhaiya, is Manjunath, a non teaching staff working at this plush private school for eight years.

The parents immediately took the their child to school to go to the depth of the matter. In school, the child identified Manjunath, and recounted the incident five to six times in front of the principal and two other teachers.

If this did not shock you, there is more. The parents claim that when they asked the principal to take action against Manjunath, the principal, the parents alleged, blatantly refused to file an FIR. When finally the parents filed an FIR the principal pleaded with the parents to withdraw the FIR since Manjunath was working there for many years.

If this did not shock you, there is more. This one complaint has opened up a pandora’s box. Several parents have now come forward to reveal the horrors that their children have faced. Six more cases of child sexual abuse have been filed against Manjunath.

The mother of a two-and-a-half year boy said, “For nearly a month, he has been complaining of a pain in his bottom. We gave him deworming medicine…”

Another parent said that his child revealed to him that Manjunath had tried to assault her, and that she complained to a teacher. But the teacher allegedly dismissed the issue and only gave a ‘warning’ to Manjunath to not repeat such actions.

The parent of another 4-year-old said: “Sexual assault is not the first thing parents think of when children say they have belly-ache. After the incident came to light, I asked my child if Manju had done the same with them as well. The response was shocking. My child said that’s what I have been telling you – that my belly is aching. When I asked my child to describe what happened, that’s when I realised that it was sexual assault.”

As a culmination of all this, On Tuesday, concerned parents and child rights activists gathered outside the pre-school. The parents protested and revealed the above tales and more about the horrifying experiences their children had to face.

The parents met the city police chief, who then revealed that the school had not been complying with the safety regulations ordered by the police department following a series of alleged sexual assaults two years ago. The police also revealed that the playschool’s zonal head, Kingston D’souza, principal Veena and a senior official named Praveen were arrested. They have slapped with Section 188 of IPC and have also been booked under various sections of POCSO.

The director of the playschool, which has 160 students in nursery and kindergarten, saidthat the services of Manjunath had been terminated. The director also claimed that the school had conducted background verification of Manjunath and refuted allegations that the school did not cooperate with the parents.

While this case unravels, it is imperative that national media wakes up to this. If not 24×7 updates, it at least deserves a few prime time debates. Such exposure will ensure that nobody goes scot free in this case. Further, the issue of sexual abuse of children needs to be now discussed on dinner tables. Parents need to talk to their children and educate them about what kind of touching is right and wrong.

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