In her complaint, Aliya Assadi, a student of a PU college, alleged that the reporters of Asianet Suvarna News had barged into her house and breached her privacy in the name of sting operation
Team Clarion
NEW DELHI – Police in Karnataka’s Udupi district have filed a case under section 448 of the IPC against reporters of a private news channel on a complaint by Aliya Assadi, student of a PU college and petitioner in the Hijab case pending in the high court. She alleged that the reporters had barged into her house and breached her privacy in the name of sting operation.
A copy of the FIR filed by Assadi is with Clarion India. It says the reporters of Asianet Suvarna News entered her house without permission with a hidden camera and started harassing her asking unsolicited questions.
Assadi is part of a six-member group which started the ongoing resistance against hijab ban in educational institutions.
Recounting the incident, she tweeted, “What I’m seeing today is that most of them have forgotten the media ethics. Asianet Suvarna News has just crossed its limits by entering my home forcefully to harass with hidden cameras.”
The FIR comes a day after a Hindutva mob attacked a restaurant belonging to the family of another Muslim girl Hajra Shifa. The mob beat up and told her brother to ask her sister to stop the demanding the right to hijab.
Speaking to Clarion India, Shifa said the attack on her family and property has left her mentally disturbed. The family has filed a police complaint and demanded that the goons should be arrested. “They pelted stones. My brother fainted and was to be hospitalised,” she said. “They were demanding to see my dad and wanted to harm him too.”
Shifa said days before the attack, some journalists used hidden cameras to record an interview of her father and after that ran a short clip of the interview to malign them.
The girls blame the college authorities for their ordeal who leaked their addresses and private details making them a target of hate. The local Kannada media has come under severe criticism for its coverage of the hijab row. They are filming videos of Muslim girls and women without their consent and chasing them for interviews.
One video which exemplifies the mindset of the media is where a school girl is seen running away from a bunch of cameraman on the prowl. The incident sparked massive outrage in the state, but the media doesn’t seem to relent.
What’s all the more ironical is that the media is blaming the Muslim girls who demanded their constitutional right to wear hijab at a Udupi college for the whole controversy.
