Three long months after an 8-year-old girl in Jammu’s Kathua district was abducted, raped, murdered and thrown away, Indian media and the society are finally talking and mourning the death of the minor victim.

The incident had taken place on January 10, just six days after the death of Pakistan’s six-year-old Zainab Ansari, for whom the entire nation came together in solidarity. Many changed their profile pictures on Facebook “seeking justice”.

The guilty in Zainab’s case has been given death sentence. In India, the 8-year-old’s rape witnessed two of the ruling BJP’s ministers leading a rally held in favour of the accused, threats to the victim family, communal violence, threats to the rape victim’s lawyer, and so on. Despite frequent developments in the case, a majority of ‘India’s most read/ watched/ trusted/ number 1’ media outlets failed to cover the little girl’s agony when it first came to light.

What took so long?

“After that little kid has left this world, after her parents have gone into depression, after everything is shattered, the people in India are now talking about giving justice to her? What took you all so long?” questioned the victim’s relative Hasham Din.

“Had her abduction not been as brutal as the charge sheet revealed, India would have still kept quiet…” Din paused and with a low voice he added, “…like they were all these months.”

It was the local media in Kashmir that had first covered the “alleged” rape and murder of the minor girl three months back. Later, after the charge sheet submitted by the Crime Branch “confirmed” the cruelty of the crime, national media started its “exclusive” coverage.

As per a Kashmir-based journalist Nisar Dharma, who was perhaps the first to report the “fringe elements” in this case, Indian media’s coverage which started only after looking at the “goriness” of crime show their “level of hypocrisy”.

“This happened way back in January, and after three months I see the Indian society talking about it, and national media all of sudden reporting the brutality of this case,” he said. “I feel strange.”

“As a journalist, I believe, this case should have gotten media attention right after there was a protest held in favour of the accused, which had political influence. Isn’t it evident that all these protests were nothing but a conspiracy to hide the truth?” he further questioned.

“But the national media did not care enough.”

The rally which was held on February 16 by the Hindu Ekta Manch under the presence of two BJP ministers, was covered by none apart from the local media in Kashmir and a few media-portals like The Wire, Firstpost, The Logical Indian, Scroll.

In print media, no other mainstream national newspapers apart from The Indian Express carried the news the next day. Along with The Indian Express, NDTV and CNN were among the only media outlets that followed the case and were regularly reporting it.

Despite all this, Sameer Yasir, an independent Srinagar-based journalist told BBC that for New Delhi, the story of the rape and murder of 8-year-old wasn’t “big”.

“When some of the reporters approached their offices in Delhi to tell them about the incident, the feeling was that the inauguration of a garden of tulips in the valley was a better story than the rape and murder of a girl,” Yasir was quoted as saying.

Dharma also said that the “exclusive revelations and developments” that are now being reported by the Indian media have already been covered by the locals.

For instance, recently, it was reported that the victim was not allowed to be buried in her own ancestral graveyard, which Dharma had reported way back on January 21.

Another local journalist Javid Ahmad, who has followed the case throughout, believes that “political inclination” could be one of the reasons behind the “lazy” coverage by national media.

“Why national media barring some, at the initial stage, ignored to highlight the case, only they can answer,” Javid said, adding: “Political inclination could be one of the reasons, maybe?”

Not politicians, but the common people… – A mother’s message

In a short phone conversation with The Logical Indian, the 8-year-old rape victim’s mother appealed the common people to “pressurise” the government and the law to take “quick action” against the guilty.

“I don’t care what the politicians have to say about my daughter, but it’s nice to know people coming out demanding justice for her after all that has happened in the past three months,” she said.

“Par (But)…” she paused, and added, “Bahot darr lagtaa hai…(We are really scared).”

How the Kathua gang-rape and murder unfolded

January 4: Mastermind Sanji Ram hatches the plan to abduct an 8-year-old girl to take revenge from the minority Muslim Bakrewal community in Jammu’s Kathua district.

January 7: Sanji Ram influences his nephew to kidnap the minor from the place where she regularly comes for grazing horses.

January 8: Policeman Deepak Khajuria, on directions from Sanji Ram…