Tuesday, November 26, 2013

No one knows who killed Aarushi..

.. but its clear the Talwars were killed by the media.  Goes a status update by Ramesh Srivats, a popular social media personality.


I completely agree. I have ranted earlier about the uselessness of the Indian media, but they seem to be stooping even lower than the abysmally low standards they have set for themselves. In this case, they have assumed the worst in every human being involved in the case- it was conjectured that the victim- a Delhi schoolgirl was involved in an affair with their old cook, the father, who along with his wife, murdered his daughter, had an affair with someone else, the mother is a stone who assisted her husband in murdering her own child, while being aware of her husband having an affair.

Maybe its the middle class educated person in me speaking- but none of this makes any sense. I refuse to believe that parents who had a normal relationship with their daughter and bought her gifts on her birthday would do something gruesome the same night. I refuse to believe that the parents would come together and plot the murder of their child.  You can argue taht there are psychopaths everywhere and I am biased because of their education/affluence. I would have agreed had it been the mother killing her child or the father killing the child. Two psychopaths getting together, staying married, leading a happy normal family life and suddenly deciding to gruesomely murder their daughter just doesnt make sense. And most importantly the cook murder business makes no sense.  It is just the kind of nonsense an impulsive murderer would do, not a carefully manipulative psychopath. If nothing, I think I can vouch for teh Talwars' intelligence- if two doctors are planning a murder, they wouldnt do such a botchy job. And the "honour killing" which our media has taken a fancy to- seems so beyond reality.

Regardless of my opinions, the world is a strange place and any thing is possible- the way the media handled this was shameful, to say the least. With absolutely no benefit to the accused, with no concern about the fact that they might be parents grieving the death of their only daughter, they were baying for stories like a bunch of bloodthirsty wolves.  All journalistic ethics and human compassion flew out the window as they competed with each other to produce the most sensationalist bit of this whole episode. If one said the doctor had an affair, teh other rushed to accuse the mother of being a stone, and yet another channel couldnt stop talking about the affair the young school girl had with teh cook. No one stopped to think what a horrid thing this was to do- IF the Talwars were pronounced innocent by the court. Now that they have been proven guilty, it puts things in a different spin. Am sure very soon we will hear the distinguished opinions of Alyque Padamsee and Chetan Bhagat on the matter of parents killing their own kids.  But had they been proven innocent, will the media ever realise that not only did they act so insensitively towards two perfectly decent people who had lost their daughter, but also defamed them and changed their lives so much for the worse? Would they have been able to get back to regular life ?

And from what little I have read of the case, there seem to be too many holes.  Having watched a few episodes of  " The Practice" I would have thought it wouldnt pass muster in the courts.  Anyways I dont know.  This post is not to debate whether the judgement was right or wrong. This is about how the media pronounced them guilty long before the courts did. And did so in the most sensationalist way possible, that no one involved in the story got out unscathed. Its as if they thought " Hmm, whats the worst thing this person can do in this situation?" and went right ahead and accused them of that.

We call them the watchdogs of the society, but sometimes they become the bloodthirsty hounds we all fear.

PS: I was reading about this case, after writing this post and one of the links said " the truth is an inadequate weapon".