Who is responsible for the death of over a hundred people on the ‘bridge of death’ in Morbi, Gujarat?
Times Now boldly said the Gujarat government needed to answer questions, NDTV India asked if the state’s BJP government could evade responsibility for the death of 135 while most television news channels pointed fingers at the company charged with renovating the bridge this year, Oreva.
A few mentioned the civic authorities’ negligence, and on Wednesday, they reported that an Oreva manager, Deepak Parekh, blamed God—by the way, on Monday, Times Now had a news item on the Trinamool Congress reminding everyone that in 2016, Prime Minister Narendra Modi had said that the collapse of the Vivekananda bridge in Kolkata was ‘…not an act of God, this is an act of fraud…’.
Finally, at least one anchor gave us what he called the “bitter truth”: the people on the bridge were responsible for the accident (Aaj Tak). The 1880 Julto Pul had a capacity of approximately 150 people at a time but there were over 500 people on the bridge when the accident occurred, said Sudhir Chaudhary. Many of them used it as a “picnic spot”—playing, jumping, taking selfies, shaking its cables, he added.
Some viewers may silently have agreed with him, but when children — as many as 45, according to India Today – died after falling from the bridge, should he have been more sensitive? Couldn’t his “kavda sach” have awaited a more appropriate occasion? Oreva’s PR also told Republic TV that the people on the bridge were responsible — this was immediately condemned by the channel as a “brazen response”.
Also read: ‘Kept calling but nobody came’: Morbi bridge survivors’ stories of terror & abandonment
Anchors with answers
Questions, questions and more questions crowded the minds of television news reporters and anchors as they sought to make sense of the senseless “man made” disaster (Republic TV, Times Now). News channels telecast hazy, mobile video footage of the incident as it occurred, with Times Now Navbharat actually numbering individuals who were about to fall off it and into the Machu river below. Bizarre.
Why was there no fitness certificate for the bridge? asked Times Now. Will the guilty be booked? demanded India Today. Will it be seen as murder or an accident, asked one of the channel’s anchors, to which Times Now replied with a categoric #PunishMorbiMurderers.
The ‘big question’ about the ‘Morbi horror’ on CNN News 18 Monday morning was, “Why did no one monitor the crowd?”. TV 9 Bharatvarsh wanted to know, “Why were there more than 400 on the bridge when only 100 were allowed?” “How did the bridge break within 15 days of its repair?” queried Zee News. “How did a private company reopen the (public) bridge?” asked NDTV India. “If the civic authorities had inspected the bridge, could this tragedy have been prevented?” it added. “Why was due diligence not done? Will the perpetrators ‘go scot free?’” asked CNN News 18.
By late Monday afternoon, Times Now had an answer: there were many unanswered questions, it announced and hinted darkly at a #Morbi cover-up. Republic TV was more forthright — ‘Greed has led to tragedy’, was one of its headlines. India Today agreed: ‘Profit in mind, sent kids to death’. “More than 500 tickets were sold out of greed,” said its sister channel, Aaj Tak. When Times Now found the Oreva headquarters in Ahmedabad deserted and closed, its intrepid reporter tried to call the CMD on the air. “It is switched off … (this is) nothing short of murder…”
Many channels, like Zee News, India TV showed us visuals of the rusty cables holding up the bridge to support the charge of ‘corruption’ (Aaj Tak). Channels also focused their attention on the victims, often in descriptive, colorful prose: “Do the lives of the poor not count?” asked NDTV India. “The ticket of death—Victims seen dangling from the bridge” (Republic TV).
ABP News thought about the parents of the children who died: “They watched as their children’s hopes died with them,” said its reporter. Aaj Tak visited the home of a 19-year-old victim — all we saw were stony-faced woman; a teenage boy crying pitifully, because his 6-year-old sister had died (Zee Hindustan); in ‘I saw death’, Zee News went to the hospital that PM Narendra Modi visited on Tuesday, and spoke to some of the casualties—one injured man looked completely dazed as he haltingly replied and you wondered why the channels couldn’t have left him alone. Aaj Tak tried to interview a man who lost his wife and two kids — “I can’t speak,” he said, tears gathering in his eyes. On TV9, the parents of a victim recounted how their son went out and never came back. They found his motorcycle at the riverfront.
Also read: Suspension of responsibility in Morbi bridge tragedy & no Nehru to blame this time
Camera and the PM
When PM Modi arrived in Morbi, Tuesday afternoon, the news channels were on the look-out for him. “We can see the helicopter (with the PM)—first pictures on Times Now Navbharat”, intoned the channel’s reporter, staring up at a milky sky and the whirring flying machine.
A few reporters got somewhat carried away: on Republic TV, one claimed that the PM had been holding “non-stop meetings 24×7” on the incident. Others were busy reading Modi’s mind: “He will want to know who was responsible… how did this happen…” said the CNN News 18 correspondent. “The PM always takes a futuristic view,” explained India TV’s man at ground zero.
Let CNN News 18 have the last word: on Tuesday, it announced almost in despair, “No lessons learnt from the Morbi tragedy”, and showed video clips of a car getting stuck on a narrow suspension bridge in Karnataka.
The author tweets @shailajabajpai. Views are personal.
(Edited by Prashant)