Over 75 days after two Kuki women were paraded naked by a mob in Manipur and then sexually assaulted, the Manipur police made its first arrests in the case. It arrested four people in Thoubal district.
In a completely unrelated case, the Imphal East District police had arrested one Abdul Hilim yesterday. The police alleged he is a member of an insurgent group called People's Revolutionary Party of Kangleipak.
If you’re a reputed news agency, what do you do?
Surely not conflate the two and claim a man called Abdul was arrested in connection with the viral video.
And yet...
ANI wasn’t alone in this, to be strictly fair. Blue-tick BJP members had tweeted that “Abdul Khan” was the “main accused of Manipur case”.
Both BJP members @TajinderBagga & @rishibagree are jumping with joy. They thought they finally found Muslim angle to blame. pic.twitter.com/l9HcOldpN9
— Mohammed Zubair (@zoo_bear) July 20, 2023
ANI apologised this morning, saying its tweet was “inadvertently” posted “based on an erroneous reading of tweets posted by the Manipur police”.
Note on Story retraction and APOLOGY: Yesterday evening, inadvertently a tweet was posted by ANI regarding arrests undertaken by the Manipur Police. This was based on an erroneous reading of tweets posted by the Manipur police as it was confused with an earlier tweet regarding…
— ANI (@ANI) July 21, 2023
Just two weeks ago, ANI had retracted a cooked-up story on Manipur because it had been based on a fake press release.
Earlier this week, after the video of the Kuki women went viral on social media, the National Commission of Women took suo motu cognisance of the case and asked the Manipur police to take “appropriate action”. But Newslaundry learned that the NCW had been sent an official complaint about the case 38 days before – but did nothing. Read about it here.
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