An IRCTC staffer was beaten mercilessly and is now struggling for his life in a private hospital after being beaten mercilessly by a passenger in the Sealdah Rajdhani Express. As per official records, Sushanta Behera — a workman-3 grade employee on duty on the B-9 AC III-tier coach was mercilessly thrashed by a passenger, Md. Zaid. Sushanta Behera was rushed to the Apollo Gleneagles Hospital. His condition has deteriorated significantly. At Apollo, doctors have said that Sushanta Behera’s left side is paralyzed and he has suffered injuries to his brain and spine. Sushanta Behera’s only crime- he brushed against Md. Zaid when there was a jerk in the train. What is equally unfortunate is that none of the other passengers intervened when Mr. Behera was being thrashed by a goon. More so, when the Railway Protection Force reached the scene, the goon, and his uncle, M Quraishi tried to pass off this incident as a minor one. Fortunately, both the miscreants, originally from Park Circus, Kolkata were arrested by the Railway Protection Force and are now in the custody of the Government Railway Police, charged under IPC section 307, an attempt to murder.
On June 22, 2017, a 16-year old boy, was stabbed by a man in a local train. The boy, Junaid Khan and his brothers – Haseeb and Shakir and cousin Moeen – were returning to their village in Haryana on June 22 after a day-trip to Delhi to shop for Eid when they got into a quarrel with a group of men over sharing of seats. Naresh, who was drunk got into the altercation and stabbed Junaid Khan using a pocket knife he was carrying. Unfortunately, Junaid Khan died before any medical help could be provided and Naresh was arrested within a month by the Police.
Prima facie, both Junaid Khan and Sushanta Behera cases look similar. A moron takes offense over a minor issue and blood is spilled unnecessarily. Generally, both these stories should generate an equal amount of traction in the society. However, this is not the case.
The Junaid Khan case was highlighted by third-grade politicians and fourth-grade actors masquerading as journalists as an incident of intolerance. An attempt by the Hindu majority to force its whims on the “hapless” minorities. A picture of grim India under Narendra Modi’s Administration. Nearly every anti-establishment news and print outlet descended upon the story like hawks and India’s left, a well-established coven of hypocrites and pseudo-secularists, added their own seasonings to the incident.
While any loss of life is unfortunate, the blatant portrayal of a moron’s act to defame an entire nation is plain, very wrong. The Delhi-Mathura route is well known for its lawlessness and the author himself has had very unfortunate incidents on the same route. Simply put, a group of 4 teenagers getting into a brawl with a group of 5 men over sharing of some seats is not entirely unimaginable. The inaction of the remaining passengers in the railway carriage, the silent majority, was treated as an act of the mob, which was baying for the blood of the boys. But what should have been the classic case of lawless India, a problem of law and order was portrayed with communal undertones and the incident was widely run in the media, to extract the maximum mileage out of it to promote an atmosphere of fear and distrust in the minorities and ultimately, divide the nation.
In some aspects, the recent lynching (yes, it is a lynching, nothing less) of Sushanta Behera is worse than the Junaid Khan’s case. In Junaid Khan’s case, the victim and the assailants were of the same socio-economic grouping competing for the same set of resources. The main assailant was drunk and it is reasonable to say that alcohol ruins our sense of good and bad. But in all the cacophony of communalism, this was over-looked and a well-cooked broth of hatred was brewed. In the case of Sushanta Behera, the assailant and the victim did not come from the same socio-economic grouping. The assailant was traveling in an AC compartment and resides in one of the good areas of Kolkata. Sushanta Behera, as stated earlier, was a grade 3 workman, differing significantly from the assailant. There was no provocation, no abuses were hurled by Sushanta Behera or any instance of lewd gesturing. There have been no reports of the assailant being drunk. The sole cause of aggression is that Mr. Behera, who was carrying an ice-cream carton brushed against Md. Zaid when there was a jerk. Beating a man senseless over this is nothing but the worst case of inhumanity on display.
The majority, silent and stoned as ever, did not intervene. But the most unfortunate takeaway from this incident is that it barely got noticed in the national media. India’s left wing, self-proclaimed champions of the proletariat and the ones that made the most noise in the Junaid saga have conspicuously been silent.
All this forces me to wonder what have we become so shallow that we need labels to vent out our anger? Has our media become so mired in the quest for screen time that it has forgotten its primary job to report? Have our politicians sunk into greater depths of the sinking sand of political correctness? Has this become a nation of people of selective outrages? Has our country become only a piece of land holding Hindus and Muslims? Has our nation become a country of No humans?