Gurugram: Online hate continues unabated, communal spin given to women’s murder

In an earnest desire to play Hindu victimhood, a section of right wing people shared a video clip across social media platforms purportedly showing the dead body found in Gurugram three days ago was a victim of ‘love jihad’.

The 53-second video shot showed police officers investigating a suitcase stuffed with the dead body dumped allegedly at IFFCO Chowk in the millennium city with provocative comments and warnings issues to Hindu women against having affairs with Muslim men. Upon investigation by fact-checking website Alt News, along with a couple of news portals, it came to fore that the disinformation campaign fuelled to bolster the Hindu victimhood narrative has “not an iota of truth” in the depiction and allegations.

 The Gurugram police rejected the communal spin given to the incident on social media platforms and confirmed that both the accused and the victim were members of Hindu community. The accused is a Hindu and hails from the Kushwah caste, and the victim, Priyanka, belongs to the Yadav caste.

The video in question has been shared and viewed widely. As of now, some BJP leaders and scores of party workers shared the unfounded video, wrongly attributed to a case of love jihad, a conspiracy

नोट- सेंसिटिव कंटेंट
पिरान करीयर में लव जिहाद। अपनी प्रेमिका काजल की हत्या कर सूटकेस में लाश को कलियर गेस्ट हाउस से ठिकाने लगाने जा रहा ज्वालापुर का गुलशेर।

डिटेल्स @thelaatanews पर कुछ देर में pic.twitter.com/4MAWXFp0gt

— Ashish Nautiyal (@ashu_nauty) March 25, 2022

 News portal The Wire fact-checked the incident and brought to fore the social media campaign in this regard. It reported a Twitter user, @ajaychauhan41, sharing the clip and writing, “Yet another suitcase, yet another girl’s body same old case of love jihad. Gurugram.” Upon checking the account, it was found deleted. Another tweet by BJP district social media head of Ghaziabad wrote: “The body of a woman aged 20 to 25 years was found in a suitcase near Iffco Chowk. The woman’s arms and legs were also broken. Seeing the dead body, it seems that the murder took place a few hours ago. An FIR has been registered in the matter. Efforts are on to identify the body of the woman. It is being said that it could be a case of love jihad”.

However, this is not an isolated incident. Noted civil rights activist Nadeem Khan, whose United Against Hate campaign globally recognized said: “The Hindu right wing groups over the years have significantly influenced the governments in several states, mostly ruled by BJP, to put in place legal mechanisms to check conversions and love jihad which are, according to them, a concerted efforts by Christianized West and Muslim world to change India’s demography.” He also deplored the opposition parties for their failure to stand firm against the divisive legislation. “Electoral consideration is above everything for all the political outfits in the majoritarian set up of Indian democracy,” he concluded.

 NDTV’s ‘VIP’ hate speech tracker in early this year showed that during 2009-14, there were 19 instances of hostile rhetoric towards minorities by high-ranking politicians. But from 2014, when Modi became PM, to the start of 2022, there have been 348 such instances – a surge of 1,130 percent.

 According to the Wall Street Journal, Facebook’s internal research found the platform, along with WhatsApp, was massively used during Delhi riots.  While critics accuse Facebook’s parent company Meta of not keeping a check on hate contents. The Meta denies it, claiming it has “zero tolerance for hate speech on Facebook and Instagram, and we remove it when we’re made aware of it.”

The writer is a media analyst, working for a UN firm. He can be reached at quamar.ashraf@gmail.com.

-INDIA NEWS STREAM