Anyone who has little experience in Photoshop would tell you that those pictures were morphed. The pixelated borders of the text added to the original pictures was clearly a sign of tampering. Alas! The Twitteratis and the Whatsappians do not put much thought before forwarding and posting such pictures, and in the nick of time those pictures were trending on all the social media platforms.

Who will take the responsibility of sabotaging India’s reputation?

The victim was an eight year old girl, who did not deserve the fate she met with. Yes we all want justice for the little girl, but not by peddling fake news and fake pictures.

The Kathua story comes very close to “Shopian murder and rape case” of 2009, which kept the valley burning for almost 6 months. To give you a little background of the case- two women were washed ashore on the banks of the Rambiara river in Shopian in summer 2009. One of the body was half naked, lying on dry sand, with blood dripping from the nose and sindoor smeared on her forehead or so said one of the witnesses. Deaths of the two women were claimed to be murders, carried out by a blood thirsty saffron campaigners in an attempt to annihilate Kashmiri muslims. In the subsequent clashes that broke out, 8 people lost their lives and some 400 suffered injuries.

The case was handed over to CBI and the AIIMS was roped in to carry out the post-mortem; it did not shock many when the reports emerged that the evidences were fake. The vaginal swabs which the doctors in Shopian claimed to have tested belonged to unconnected women, the hymen of one the dead woman was found intact and at-least 6 witnesses said that the dead bodies were not found half naked. But by the time the reports were out, damage was already done. Omar Abdullah, the Chief Minister then, and Ms Mufti,the opposition, all had their hands in the cookie jar in adding fuel to fire.

Who would take responsibility of staging a fake saffron terror?

India is a country of a billion people and just as many opinions; Democratic rights are often misused but the duty towards our motherland is often forgotten. We had the thespian community join in the protest for Kathua victim; many big names posted their pictures with a hashtag #AshamedOfHindustan . But would somebody please remind them that these are the same people who distort history in the name of “artistic expression” and sabotage country’s reputation by supporting trending hashtags without investigating facts.

Hindustan is a name often used at whims to show majority of the country in a dim light and to sabotage India’s reputation. As a Netizen it is the responsibility of each one of us to be an ambassador of our country and to avoid posting anything sans proof. Be a responsible citizen of India!