With the Delhi police rubbishing the claims about Najeeb Ahmed made by the national daily, the practice of using anonymous sources to make accusations has come under fire.
New Delhi: Days after the Times of India carried a report insinuating that the missing JNU student Najeeb Ahmed could be an ISIS sympathiser – a charge Delhi police officials have denied – sections of the civil society and students across Delhi University college campuses have demanded an unconditional apology from the national daily.
On March 21, a TOI front-page story by journalist Raj Shekhar Jha had claimed on the basis of conversations with anonymous “highly placed sources” that Ahmed’s internet browsing history apparently showed that he was looking for information on ISIS’s “ideology, execution and network,” and that his searches included “ways to join ISIS” and similar such queries.
The story also claimed that the conclusions were drawn from a report on his browsing history, which was accessed by the Delhi police, from YouTube and Google, and has now been submitted to the Delhi high court.
Ahmed went missing from JNU, which he had recently joined as a research scholar, on October 15 following an assault on him by the ABVP, a student group affiliated to the RSS.
According to Jha’s claims in the TOI story, on October 14, a day before his disappearance, Ahmed was watching an ISIS video on YouTube when the ABVP assaulters knocked on his door.
Soon after the TOI story was published, many television channels picked up the news and aired the unverified information without confirming the charges with the Delhi police.
However, when a few journalists decided to verify the information, Delhi police officials denied having accessed any such report on Ahmed’s browsing history.
“We saw a report in the media claiming that Google and YouTube had indicated that Najeeb was listening to a speech by an IS member a day before he went missing and he may be associated with the organisation. The police has not received any such report. Any association with the ISIS has not come up in Delhi police’s investigation so far,” special commissioner of police and Delhi police spokesperson Dependra Pathak told the Hindustan Times.
Pathak further said that the police had not submitted “any such report or evidence to the high court” and that its “investigations have not yielded any such information,” clearly contradicting the TOI story.
Amidst contradicting reports, on March 22 the TOI was forced to publish a 75-word comment from the Delhi police, in which the police denied having accessed any such information on Ahmed.
In the verbal battle that ensued after the publication of the story, many students and activists condemned the practice of using anonymous sources while making such wild allegations in a case as sensitive as Ahmed’s.
Despite issuing a clarification, Jha made another attempt to back his story even as he was forced to accept the police’s denial.
To a question on Twitter by political activist Kavita Krishnan, who has severely criticised the report, Jha justified his report by saying that if the cops hadn’t received Ahmed’s browsing history, how could they confirm he had not checked ISIS videos
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