The killer of Yuvraj Mehta, a 27-year-old techie, is the “system”. In one voice, the news media have blamed the “system” for the death of the man after his car veered off an unlit road in Noida, on a foggy night, and ended up in a water pit.
He waited for over two hours to be rescued. In vain. ‘Death by Admin’ wrote The Times of India in its lead editorial (21 January).
Television news reporters who visited the site repeatedly pointed out in shocked voices that there was no signage, no barricade, no reflector on the roadside. And with their fondness for melodrama, they held the “authorities” responsible.
It’s been a while since we saw television news this angry. English newspapers like The Indian Express, The Times of India detailed the efforts of the authorities to save Yuvraj Mehta—however so inadequate—but television news channels didn’t bother with such niceties.
‘Murder not mishap’ said NDTV 24×7, “by negligence and apathy…in city after city, we pay with our lives…” declared one NDTV 24×7 anchor. “The authorities slept….” he added.
They went after the “system” mercilessly. ‘Who was responsible for the murder?’ asked Times Now Navbharat. “The NDRF, the fire brigade, the police were all there and did nothing.”
According to News 24, “They watched the tamasha…Why did no one save him?”, it asked.
“The killer of Yuvraj is the system,” said TV9 Bharatvarsh.
“Indifferent, irresponsible, Noida authorities are to blame,” said ABP News. “A corrupt system is responsible,” added India TV.
Shaken TV news anchors
There have been other accidents where civic “apathy”, as many TV news anchors call it, led to deaths. The Times of India reminded us of “deaths due to negligence” — the drowning of students in a Delhi basement, a fire that killed 22 kids in Surat, to say nothing of the recent deaths of at least 15 people due to drinking contaminated water in Indore.
However, none of them has shaken and stirred the TV news channel anchors and reporters as much as this senseless Noida death.
Perhaps because it is close to the capital, Delhi, perhaps because it’s in an urban metro, or perhaps because it’s close to home—many TV news channels headquarter in Noida and Greater Noida. Or, let’s give them the benefit of the doubt: TV news correspondents are genuinely shocked by the events of that tragic night.
As they told it, Yuvraj was alive and on the bonnet of his car for two and a half hours yelling “Bachao, bachao” and flashing his mobile phone’s light, said ABP News.
Each channel showed us the water pit where the car submerged, to be found only about 90 hours later. Again and again, they reminded us: there was no signage, no barricades, no lights, no warnings, no reflectors, no nothing… “It was an accident waiting to happen,” said an NDTV 24×7 anchor.
“How does a city allow a pit to become a grave?” the anchor asked.
Within an hour of the accident, the police and the fire brigade arrived on the scene, but the news channels said “they did nothing.”
According to them, the rescuers were reluctant bystanders. “No one was prepared to enter the water,” said India TV.
Also read: Hindi TV news has found Trump’s ‘secret file’ on Iran. They’re waiting for ‘world war’
The two main sources of information were Yuvraj’s father and the delivery man Moninder Singh—the only one to jump into the water and search for Yuvraj after 1.30 am.
They appeared across channels to tell the same heartrending sequence of events. “Father says no one came forward to help”, said India TV. “There was no boat, just some ropes.”
“My son called me on the phone… he was shouting — ‘I am stuck…Papa, I don’t want to die,”, the father told Republic TV. “The father saw his son die,” added Republic Bharat.
“I tried to call people, but there wasn’t enough help,” he told Aaj Tak. “They could have saved him.”
He told NewsNation neither he nor his son could swim. “The rescue teams, the NDRF, came without the necessary equipment.”
Most of the agitated reporters and anchors sneered at the authorities present at the pit. There were around 80 of them—“He (Yuvraj) screamed for help, no one saved him. They were scared of the cold water.”
Besides the water, channels said the rescue teams feared that there were ‘sariya’—steel girders—inside, that could injure them. Also, no one knew how to swim. “Everyone was there, but they could do nothing, and none of them could swim,” the father told NDTV India.
Moninder Singh was the star of the news channels. He appeared on news channel after news channel, telling all of them that the authorities stood around, refused to enter the water but agreed that he could go ahead.
He also told the channels that the same type of incident had taken place 15 days earlier with a truck. “Why didn’t they do something?” he asked (Times Now).
“No one was trained for this kind of relief … There was no boat, the water was too cold, they were scared of steel rods below…the thought of cold water turned their blood cold,’’ said the Aaj Tak anchor on Tuesday with scorn dripping from each word. “Three agencies watch on, no one went in; this is a complete failure of the system.”
Times Now was equally angry. “Two accidents in 17 days—that’s not enough to make the authorities act?” asked an anchor. “It’s as if the authorities were waiting for someone to be killed.
Yes, this is strong stuff, and you haven’t heard it often on news channels. By the way, the authorities were careful to avoid the TV cameras. We heard from a few police officers and the sub-divisional magistrate, but that was about it.
News television has shown it has fangs when it wants to bite hard. Yuvraj Mehta and his father were just causes, and news channels really got their teeth into the “system”.
Let’s leave the last word to ABP News: “If it had been a VIP, everyone would have been there, and they would have been saved.” Ouch.
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Saptak Datta)