Front Page
The shooting at the Jamia Millia Islamia Thursday in which the shooter injured a student from the university was the lead in most newspapers with telling headlines. The Indian Express pulls no punches in, “2 days after goli maaro…”, referring to the slogans raised by BJP leaders Anurag Thakur and Parvesh Verma “desh ke gadaaron ko, goli maaron…”. Hindustan Times makes the link even clearer with “Hate speech to hate crime” while The Times of India goes ironic, “On Martyrs’ Day, 17-year-old fires at anti-CAA march in presence of cops”. The Hindu, oddly carries the story as its second lead — “Slogan-shouting shooter injures Jamia student”.
The Telegraph is as always, grandiloquent: “PM, thugs of your new India have transformed bapu’s immortal ‘hey ram’ into ‘hey ram bhakt’. It is also the one newspaper to not pixelate the photograph of the shooter who is reportedly a juvenile.
In other deadly news, coronavirus has officially entered India — a Kerala student is the first confirmed case of the virus, the story is the lead in Hindu and is given prominence in other papers as well.
Jamia shooting: HT writes, “Oppn calls it the fallout of hate slogans by senior BJP leaders”, while also critiquing the police for acting like “bystanders”.TOI covers two aspects of the incident. The front page features a powerful image of the gunman brandishing the gun. The story on the flap details how the “shooter was livestreaming just before attack at Jamia”. He wrote on Facebook, “I’m about to bring them azaadi” and “You may have heard of tandav, now you will see…”.
Express carries multiple smaller stories covering the shooter’s Facebook posts and the BJP MP who initiated the slogan.
Coronavirus in India: Hindu writes , “Country’s first coronavirus infection confirmed in Kerala.” The report adds, “Student from Thrissur district was studying in Wuhan; her condition is stable”. An accompanying report provides updates from China as the country “sees 38 deaths in a day”.
Express notes, “The patient, a 20-year-old medical student who just came back from Wuhan, has been kept in isolation and is stable”. The flap story on TOI reports, “India’s 1st coronavirus case reported in Kerala”, adding that the virus “has killed 170 people in China and has spread to other countries, including the US.” HT also reports the story on its flap with a table titled “The Global Threat”, which gives details on the countries affected.
IndiGo pilot: After comedian Kunal Kamra was banned from IndiGo for six months after ‘heckling’ Republic TV anchor Arnab Goswami, Express reports “IndiGo pilot who flew Kamra objects to ban, asks airline to clarify”. It adds that the pilot said that he was “disheartened to learn” that the airline had “taken action in this case solely on the basis of social media posts, with no consultation whatsoever with the Pilot-in-Command”.
Hindu calls it a “leaked email” and TOI notes that the pilot asked, “Why was Kamra banned when I didn’t file any complaint”. The pilot, in his letter, also wrote, “Am I to understand that the bar for interpretation of a disruptive passenger is lower/different when it comes to high-profile cases?”.
Opinion
The Indian Express: In “Police Zindabad”, Express criticises the police for gross negligence as it failed to act when a minor pulled out a gun and shot at anti-CAA protesters outside Jamia. Express recalls recent incidents where the Delhi Police has been criticised for the severity of action against protesters especially in Jamia and JNU.
However, it notes, the police is not the only culprit as Hindutva right-wing groups and senior BJP leaders are provoking their supporters. Express targets Delhi Police’s outgoing commissioner Amulya Patnaik but says he probably cannot do much when the “masters urge crowds to ‘goli maaro’ (shoot them)”.
The Times of India: In “Bail or jail”, TOI writes that the Supreme Court’s ruling granting anticipatory bail for those under trial is a strong message as arbitrary arrests were curtailing the discretionary power to grant bail. However, the provision should also be available to undertrial prisoners in jails with no resources to bail themselves out as privileged prisoners with lawyers easily get bail. Therefore, more liberal bail provisions are required as “rights are fundamental but restrictions aren’t”, argues TOI, quoting Justice Ravindra Bhat’s judgment.
The Hindu: Hindu welcomes the central government’s move extending the limit of medical termination of pregnancy to 24 weeks in “A deliverance”. The extension of limit would ease the process for women, allowing the mainstream healthcare system to take care of them and delivering quality medical attention, it writes.
Prime Time
Prime time debate was dominated by the shooting outside Jamia Milia Islamia campus. Times Now anchor Padmaja Joshi interacted with Jamia students and was reminded of Shaheen Bagh. She asked, “Will this ugly shock end Shaheen Bagh?”
On Aaj Tak, Anjana Om Kashyap grilled AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi about the Jamia shooting, but Owaisi squarely said that if BJP leaders were renaming Shaheen Bagh as “Shaitan Bagh”, inciting crowds to shoot people, and claiming that protestors would come break into homes and rape people, it was clear who the instigator was.
An ABP special showcased the “inside story” of Sharjeel Imam’s arrest, which broke down the “pyaar wala jaal” (love trap) that the police had laid out to nab him.
Republic: On the Jamia shooting, the channel misreported and said that the shooter was one of the Jamia protesters. In a change of ways, a soft spoken Arnab Goswami said, “What happened today should be a wakeup call for all those who silently allowed 40 days of provocation in Shaheen Bagh”.
“This is a dangerous fallout and the consequence of a non-stop provocation,” he Goswami.
India Today: In a heated discussion with former Delhi Police commissioner T.R. Kakkar, anchor Rahul Kanwal was unabashed in his disgust towards the Delhi Police’s conduct during the shooting. Kanwal said, “Cops are standing at the back as if it’s not their responsibility.”
Kakkar said, “The Delhi Police could not have shot the gunman”. To which Kanwal replied, “I am still reeling by what you said.”
NDTV India: Prime Time with Ravish Kumar also discussed the Jamia shooting, but took a more empathetic approach and discussed how the shooter needed to be understood, not hated.
Kumar said that the way the entire Shaheen-Bagh narrative has been filled with poison, it is not surprising that the poisonous system gave birth to such an act.
India TV: On ‘Kurukshetra’, anchor Sushant Sinha asked JD(U) leader Ajay Alok if BJP Minister Anurag Thakur was partly to blame for the Jamia incident. “Absolutely”, said Alok, but added that each “action has a reaction”, and if there was no action i.e. protests and “anti-India slogans”, there would be no reaction.
Shoaib Jamei, President of Indian Muslim Foundation, sarcastically said, “Why don’t we just give the shooter a Bharat Ratna?”