On 24th August, Jasleen Kaur posted a photo of a man stating that he passed lewd comments on her and also dared her to go ahead and report the incident to the police.
Popular Indian websites, social media pages and news outlets saw a potentially viral story and they published the photo of the accused without even blurring his face and started publicly shaming him without cross-checking the facts. There was no evidence to support the claim: no video, nor the photo showed the man in a mood which could have substantiated the girl’s claim. He was publicly shamed in front of millions of people.
Words like pervert, molester, creep, eve-teaser, etc. , were used to describe the character of the person without even realising that they were causing an irreversible damage to the reputation of a person. They did not even blur the face of the man, which should have been their first prerogative. Media made a national issue out of this and had already passed a judgement. As expected, slowly other sides of the story are unfolding. At this point of time, no one can clearly state who is right and who is wrong! Today, an eyewitness has come out in support of the guy. It will take a proper investigation to know who the real culprit is.
The motive of this post is not to blame/argue with anyone. We just raised a question to the media. Media has immense power. With power, comes ‘responsibility’. Kindly realize and follow your responsibilities. The ones who shared these stories on social media are equally responsible. Kindly think twice before you share/endorse anything on social-media.This is not the first instance of social media trial. We had seen cases of Rohtak Sisters, Nagaland mob lynching case, etc.
We at The Logical Indian fear that as more of us are getting into the behaviour of mob justice, the farther we are getting away from true justice. If media keeps reporting such stories without verifying the facts, there will be a day, when we will become so cynical that we won’t believe a genuine victim. False cases must be investigated appropriately and strict actions must be taken. Not just a particular gender but all of us will be equally affected by such false cases.
