Imagine you’re a stringer for a major news organisation in Delhi. You’re based in Assam, which has seen over 190 flood-related deaths this year. You receive a phone call from your bosses instructing you to investigate a new, sinister claim – that of “flood jihad”.
This is what several reporters and stringers in the state faced on July 6, soon after #FloodJihad began trending on Twitter. The theory was that four Muslim men had, in an act of “jihad”, purposely breached a river dyke that led to the flooding of Silchar city in Cachar district.
