In what comes as yet another evidence of Indian media working against the nation’s interests, during the hearing on Kulbhushan Jadhav case at International Court of Justice, the Pakistani side produced The Quint’s story on the Indian prisoner as the definitive proof against the Indian claims.
Qureshi refers to Chandan Nandy article published in @TheQuint. It's taken a journalist to raise the question of the passport issue, Qureshi#KulbhushanJadhav #ICJ pic.twitter.com/c56UXMMVVr
— Bar & Bench (@barandbench) February 19, 2019
The Quint had published the highly objectionable article on January 06, 2018 and after a backlash had taken it down but Pakistan has repeatedly cited this article in their defence against India’s claims in Kulbhushan Jadhav case. In what read like a disastrously one sided and prejudiced piece, The Quint claimed that Kulbhushan Jadhav was an Indian Spy, and a very bad one at that who was hired even after top RAW officials had rejected his candidature. Jadhav was arrested from Balochistan and was found with his Indian passport.
In The Quint’s golden words:
The Clearest Evidence that Jadhav operated for the RAW came to the fore only after his cover – as a businessman, who would frequent Iran, especially Chabahar – was blown and he was captured by Pakistan, following which a former RAW chief, besides at least two other senior officers, called his Mumbai-based parents to “advise” them to not speak about their son’s case to anyone.
The Other evidence was the second passport, with the name Hussein Mubarak Patel, that he carried, which shows it was originally issued in 2003 and was renewed in 2014. The Second Passport was issued in Thane on 12 May 2014 and was due to expire on 11 May 2024.”
A nonsense of this magnitude was bound to upset people, and so it did. People didn’t take The Quint article kindly. The Quint was forced to take their article down.
The Quint’s coverage on Kulbhushan Jadhav is not the only case when the left-leaning portal put someone in harm’s way or worked against national interest.
In the month of March 2017, Lance Naik Roy Mathew became the victim of slapdash journalism of The Quint. The Quint carried out a sting operation, on the much debated ‘’sahayak’’ (helper) system in the army which dates back to the colonial days. The sting video showed Lance Naik Roy Mathew, speaking against his bosses. Normally sting videos feature people with pixilation effect on their faces so as to conceal their identities, but The Quint had other ideas. The Pixilation in this case was not proper, and Roy was clearly identifiable. Roy had no idea that he was being filmed.
Few days later, Roy committed suicide.