BY SHINJINEE MAJUMDER / Alnews

Trigger Warning: Violent visuals. Viewer discretion is advised.

In the afternoon of October 4, the residents of Undhela in Gujarat’s Kheda district witnessed a public flogging of 10 Muslim men who were allegedly among the 43 who reportedly disrupted a Garba event in the same village the previous night. Each of the men was held against a pillar and caned by policemen in plain clothes (one of them seemed to be carrying a firearm). They were then taken away in a police van stationed nearby.

According to a resident of the village, who spoke to ThePrint, a message was sent out to every house in the area prior to the flogging, asking locals to gather at the spot. The incident was filmed and the videos were shared widely on social media. In those, the spectators can be heard clapping and cheering. Slogans of ‘Bharat Mata Ki Jai’ were raised. The men being flogged can be heard pleading for mercy.

The treatment meted out to the men by police, which can be termed extrajudicial punishment, was widely condemned.

After the videos caused massive outrage, an inquiry was ordered. The police officials involved in the said incident were identified three days later, on October 7. The person who is seen flogging the men was identified as police inspector A V Parmar. Another person, seen removing the phones and wallets from the pockets of the men being beaten up, was identified as sub-inspector D B Kumavat. The police are yet to name the other policeman seen in the viral videos. According to a report in The Hindu, police were going to take action against the ones who filmed the incident.

Amid widespread condemnation of the incident, some people (noticeably aligned with the Right Wing) celebrated the public flogging and even called the accused ‘j!hadis’. ‘Jihadi’ is a word Hindutva fanatics often use to target Muslims. A @MrSinha_ tweeted the video with the caption, “This is how Gujarat Police treated j!hadis who attacked Garba playing Hindu devotees in Kheda last night”.

Senior editor of Network 18 Aman Chopra went to the extent of dubbing the public flogging by the police as ‘Dandiya’ during his prime-time TV news show Desh Nahi Jhukne Denge on News18 on October 4. Not only did he not condemn the public flogging, he exalted it saying “Garbe mein pathharbaazi kar rahe the, police ne Dandiya khel diya unke saath.”

Dandiya is a socio-religious folk dance that is celebratory in nature. So when Chopra described the public flogging of the accused as ‘Dandiya’, he was clearly lauding the police for their move.

Below, Alt News has analysed his skewed reportage of the incident in detail.

This story was originally published in altnews.in . Read the full story here