Child’s innocence exploited to build a distorted narrative
J K News Today
A click and gruesome picture of a three-year-old child sitting on the lifeless body of his grandfather Bashir Ahmad following militants’ attack on a CRPF –Police checkpoint and the crossfire that followed in Sopore in north Kashmir on Wednesday was used as a tool to weave a narrative of distortions .
The child’s innocence was exploited to tell that “police killed his Papa ( as it is said , he used to call his grandfather ) . It becomes obvious when the child is asked repeatedly by reporters that who killed his “papa.” This is a self assumptive question . He is not asked to tell about the incident ‘s details .
Some have morphed the child’s face with a self-assumed ethics that they didn’t want to show the misery and trauma of the child. But the same set of media is unhesitant in saying that the child was eating chocolates and was playing in a tub. How could such a child be described as traumatized?” Then his picture on the body is splashed all over – this hypocrisy is reprehensible..
In conflict situations, such narrative building against the security forces is a commonplace for the prompters know that the child’s word would be taken as the ultimate truth and that can be used as propaganda to embarrass the security system. There is another purpose, rather primarily , to shift the blame from militants and to hide the origin of the incident- terror attack in which CRPF personnel was killed.
The child’s word has to be taken as the truth because there is an attendant idiom the children don’t lie , then what remains unanswered is that when he is saying so? . A child traumatized by the killing of his grandfather cannot be oblivious to the tragedy that has befallen him .Why should he choose to tell different ways – one is straight that her grandfather was killed by police , and then he makes the bullet sound ,”tak, tak, tak”. In another video he is seen reluctant to say that “police ne goli mari ( police fired)”. The two things are related – question and the answer. The question is asked persistently who killed his “papa” and it is repeated several times before the child haltingly says , “police ne goli mari”. Aren’t the words being put into the mouth of the child as the morphed images and gaps in between their own tale .
A child sitting on the body of his grandfather must have seen police opening fire . The police had opened fire after it had come under attack at the naka targeting militants . The militants, however, had melted away after the attack, then a child will speak only about the men whom he could identify because of their uniform. The child, probably had not seen militant, as he was sitting in car or maybe he had at the time of the attack – nothing can be said with certainty . While the militants disappeared , policemen stayed back – that was their duty. It may be noted here that militants often use combat uniform at the time of such audacious attack .
By the time , the child reached home , his family had already started circulating that Bashir pulled out of his car by CRPF and shot “him dead.” The catch here is that CRPF and police wear different set of uniforms . At the same time, the child, the sole witness to the incident in the family , could not have said something different than what his family was telling the neighbourhood and the visitors .
Pieces of puzzle fall in place
