The Indian army has termed the India Today’s report claiming that the officer, who tied an innocent Kashmiri youth to a jeep as speculative and wrong reporting.
The Indian army wrote to the media group recently on 15 May expressing its displeasure on the wrong reporting by its platform asking it to ‘corroborate factual information from official sources when reporting on sensitive military issues.’
Addressing his letter to Abhijit Majumder, managing editor editor, Mail Today, the army’s public relations officer, Colonel Aman Anand wrote, “Please refer to report titled “ Major who tied Kashmiri civilian to Jeep given clean chit, Army Brass believes he saved lives” authored by Kamaljit Kaur Sandhu published in Mail Today dated 15 May 2017. The report has stated that the Court of Inquiry has given clean chit to the Major involved in an incident wherein a civilian was tied to an Army jeep.
“As the Court of Inquiry concerned with the incident is still incomplete, it is inapropriate to speculate on the findings of the inquiry based on information given by unverified sources.”
Colonel Anand also advised the media group to correct its original report.
He added, “May I request that the journalist be advised to corroborate factual information from official sources when reporting on sensitive military issues and this news report may, therefore, accordingly be corrected.”
Colonel Anand later told Janta Ka Reporter that he had indeed sent the letter to Majumder.
In her report, the India Today journalist had said, “The court of inquiry (CoI) convened by the Army in Jammu Kashmir has given a clean chit to a Major who tied a civilian to an Army jeep’s bonnet.
“Following furore, the Army had convened a CoI on April 15, two days after an FIR was filed by J&K Police into the incident, allegedly involving a Major from 53 Rashtriya Rifles.”
India Today staff had also tweeted the news.
A video in which a youth was allegedly tied to an army jeep as a human shield against stone pelters had gone viral on social media, leading to an outrage with former chief minister Omar Abdullah termed it as “shocking”.