Justice Markandey Katju, an ex-judge of Supreme Court and chairman of Press Council of India, has strongly condemned both media and police for stereotyping Muslims as bombers. Instead of beating around the bush or using any euphemistic words, he said Indian police is not trained for forensic investigations and hence terror cases remain unresolved. He slammed the media for their kneejerk reactions and jumping on to the conclusions within a few hours of bomb blasts merely on the basis of e-mail or sms. “The tendency is to brand all Muslims in the country as terrorists and bomb throwers,” said Katju.
“The point is that they cannot catch the real culprits, so whoever they think may have committed the crime they catch hold of them,” he said in an interview with NDTV on Oct 17. He said when a bomb blast takes place the police catch hold of the local innocent Muslims and young people and falsely implicate them. When a policeman sees that he is failing to arrest the actual culprit he arrests an innocent and shows the media that they are the people behind the crime. Training and equipment to conduct scientific investigations is absent in India so it is done by suspicion. Many of the blasts that have taken place over the last two years have gone unresolved. They include bomb blasts in Bangalore, Varanasi, Pune, Mumbai and the most recent in New Delhi.
Justice Katju said communalism started in India in 1857 and criticised media claiming that the media “often twists facts” and diverts the attention of the people from real and important issues. He came up with the solution that media can be corrected either by using democratic ways like discussions, consultations and persuasions or by dealing with them harshly by imposing fines or suspending licences.
Katju talked about the “divide and rule” policy of the British and said as far as history is concerned, in a much planned way, the historians gave a maligned and negative image of Muslims. He said nowadays it is very easy to disturb the peaceful environment of any city by communal riots, which need just a slight provocation. He advised media that they should understand their responsibilities and work for communal harmony in the country.
He further added that after every blast, news channels claim that email has been sent by Lashkar-e-Taiba, Hizbul Mujahideen and some other Muslim groups but the fact is that anybody can send these mails. He assured that Press Council of India is trying to take necessary steps to stop this type of stereotyping.