LRO has demanded that services of bureau head and other reporters who authored the biased piece be terminated and NYT pay a compensation of Rs. 100 crores to the PM’s relief fund.
The foreign media has been Hinduphobic at worst and customarily biased at worst in its coverage of the Delhi anti-Hindu riots. After Wall Street Journal, BBC, Al Jazeera, Guardian, were caught reporting fake news and blaming the victims instead of the perpetrators, it was the turn of New York Times to spread lies in its communally sensitive coverage. The NYT in an article titled ‘How Delhi’s police turned against Muslims’ dated 12th March, 2020 had made some unverifiable preposterous claims which was not only fake but could have lead to communal polarisation.
Taking the matter seriously, Legal Rights Observatory (LRO) has initiated legal action against NYT and has demanded unconditional apology from the paper along with a compensation of Rs. 100 crore to be paid towards the PM relief fund.
LRO lawyer Shriya Gune has issued a intimation of legal action to India based NYT head Jefferry Gettleman and others for blatant lies, rumors and communally sensitive news it has spread on Delhi Riots. The other reporters of NYT who have been named in the LRO legal intimation are Shalini Venugopal, Suhasini Raj and Hari Kumar. The same story had appeared both in web and print versions.
LRO’s lawyer says that the report has the potential to invite hatred and feeling of enmity amongst citizens of India against the police and government. The report is also in violation of journalistic ethics and deserves condemnation, it says.
The LRO’s intimation letter makes the following demands:
1. Withdraw the report immediately from the web edition.
2. Issue unconditional apology in both web and print edition for publishing the same.
3. Immediately terminate services of head of operations of NYT in India.
4. Immediately terminate services of all Indian reporters involved in writing and publication of this report.
5. To pay Rs.100 Cr. towards Prime Minister’s relief fund towards compensation for the loss of reputation suffered by Indian state due to this report.
In case of failure to fulfill any of the above demands from NYT, LRO would take up appropriate civil and criminal action against the newspaper says the letter.
It may be recalled that LRO had also demanded the deportation of WSJ Bureau Chief over fake claims on IB Staffer Ankit Sharma’s brutal murder. The MEA had taken up the issue and had asked the Indian Embassy in the US to look into the request for immediate deportation of The Wall Street Journal’s South Asia Deputy Bureau Chief Eric Bellman, who is based in India, for “anti-India behaviour”.
