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It is very hard to believe that any layperson in this country has the power to even attempt to misbehave with the police forces and face no consequence at all.
Propaganda movies are not new to Bollywood (watch Azhar or Thackeray if you think I am lying).
Neither is it restricted to any particular country. ‘Reefer Madness’ or ‘Triumph of the will’ are just few examples of how effective propaganda can be in spreading outright lies under the garb of public interest.
Like most Bollywood movies inspired by true events, Batla House was meant to build a narrative that could be grasped easily by the public. And a narrative that could pass off as the actual truth.
It was pretty clear that there was a lot of dramatisation. Anyone who hoped to find out the truth behind this incident might end up with more questions than answers. And if you need further proof just read the surprisingly long disclaimer at the start of the movie.
I am not a journalist and neither do I have access to all the facts of this case. Whatever I am writing below is based on some news reports. I do not profess to know the whole truth. But there need to be some serious questions asked to the movie makers on whether there was a deliberate attempt to distort the truth and misrepresent the facts in favour of the police under the garb of dramatisation.
The director needs to answer whether there a deliberate attempt to dehumanise the minorities and social activists while feeding into the majority narrative that we need to trust the police and armed forces blindly and any questions on their work amounts to disrespecting the entire nation.
Truth be told, the Batla House encounter and the subsequent investigation has not been handled as properly as it should have been. Which is probably why the case is still in court and it has not been established yet if the encounter was genuine or fake. John Abraham, playing the role of ACP Sanjay Kumar, was resisting an independent judicial enquiry in the case because he believed that it would demoralise his men. Is it a true reflection of the attitude of our police forces? Because something like this does not bode well for the general public.
There are questions on the NHRC report wherein it is alleged that the Human Rights body did not conduct it’s own enquiry and relied only on the reports submitted by the police. Has the allegation sufficiently been countered by NHRC? More importantly we still didn’t know if Inspector Mohan Chand Sharma was killed by the guns of the alleged terrorists or was it a case of foul play.
We still don’t know how Shahzad and Junaid could manage to escape the apartment when all the exit points were cordoned off. Additionally, during the case of State vs Shahzad Ahmad, there were police officers who deposed that they had not seen these two escape the building. A fact that was not mentioned in the movie.
If what those policemen said is true then one is bound to ask why such an important fact was not a part of the movie. There is controversy surrounding the post mortem report of the two alleged terrorists. According to reports, it was obtained after filing multiple RTIs which is strange since there should be no reason to keep such information away from the public domain.
In the movie, there were scenes portraying a huge group of Muslims literally manhandling the police force. It is very hard to believe that any layperson in this country has the power to even attempt to misbehave with the police forces and face no consequence at all.
The fact is that if something like this actually happened with those policemen why was there no action taken against the people in the crowd? Why hasn’t there been any condemnation of such actions by politicians, activists or policemen? And why has this fact come out only now and that too in a movie?
And if this was just an attempt to dramatise the movie, what message is the director trying to send? That you need to pit the general public and specifically a community against the police and show them in bad light to add masala to your movie?
You can add as many disclaimers as you want to but it is pretty clear that the director and his team has come with an agenda to promote a narrative that they believe will fetch them more profits even if it obfuscates the truth and tries to portray some people in a very bad light at the expense of glorifying the police forces when the reality is that the case is still in the courts and no one really knows what actually happened on September 19th, 2008 at L-18, Batla House.
Image is a still from the movie Batla House
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Neena was the sole caregiver of Amma and though one would think that Amma was dependent on her, Neena felt otherwise.
Neena inhaled the aroma that emanated from the pan and took a deep breath. The aroma of cumin interspersed with butter transported her back to the modest kitchen in her native village. She could picture her father standing in the kitchen wearing his white crisp kurta as he made delectable concoctions for his only daughter.
Neena grew up in a home where both her parents worked together in tandem to keep the house up and running. She had a blissful childhood in her modest two-room house. The house was small but every nook and cranny gave her memories of a lifetime. Neena’s young heart imagined that her life would follow the same cheerful course. But how wrong she was!
When she was sixteen, the catastrophic clutches of destiny snatched away her parents. They passed away in a road accident and Neena was devastated. Relatives thronged her now gloomy house and soon it was decided that she should be married off.
Women today don’t want to be in a partnership that complicates their lives further. They need an equal partner with whom they can figure out life as a team, playing by each other’s strengths.
We all are familiar with that one annoying aunty who is more interested in our marital status than in the dessert counter at a wedding. But these aunties have somehow become obsolete now. Now they are replaced by men we have in our lives. Friends, family, and even work colleagues. It’s the men who are worried about why we are not saying yes to one among their clans. What is wrong with us? Aren’t we scared of dying alone? Like them?
A recent interaction with a guy friend of mine turned sour when he lectured me about how I would regret not getting married at the right time. He lectured that every event in our lives needs to be completed within a certain timeframe set by society else we are doomed. I wasn’t angry. I was just disappointed to realize that annoying aunties are rapidly doubling in our society. And they don’t just appear at weddings or family functions anymore. They are everywhere. They are the real pandemic.
Let’s examine this a little closer.
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