A photo journalist of a language newspaper published from Punjab allegedly instigated a 20-year-old uneducated girl to immolate herself outside the deputy commissioner's office in Amritsar on Monday. The journalist, it is suspected, wanted to buy the girl's disputed property.
Twenty-year-old Manpreet Kaur reached the DC office in the courts complex with a bottle of kerosene and match sticks on Monday. Some mediapersons were already present in the area. As she poured the kerosene on herself, the photojournalists started clicking even as the police and others present tried to stop her. She was taken to the Civil Lines police station and has since been arrested under Section 309 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) for attempting to commit suicide.
According to the Indian Express, Kaur told the police that a journalist (name being withheld for some reason) had prompted her to take the step to catch the attention of officials in removing her uncle from her plot. Her parents had died and her uncles and aunts have allegedly grabbed the plot. “She has a 100 yards plot, which her uncle and aunts have occupied,” said Sanjiv Kumar, SHO, Civil Lines police station.
The photojournalist, according to the Times of India, is suspected to have offered a handsome price for the property if the girl enacted the drama. The incident comes within days of two journalists of a TV channel instigating a man to commit self-immolation in a police station compound in Unjha, Gujarat.
On Thursday, two TV journalists were arrested named in Ahmedabad for coaxing a man to immolate himself outside a police station in front of their cameras. The two—Mayur Raval and Kamlesh Raval—from TV9 Gujarat and a local cable company GTPL, reportedly urged 29-year-old Kalpesh Mistry to set himself on fire to protest his harassment by police over a property dispute. Mistry suffered 90 per cent burns and later died in hospital.
An eye witness to the incident, according to Mail Today, said that the two journalists were busy shooting the immolation instead of helping the victim. “They told me not to bother about it as it was all a drama,” the tea vendor reportedly told the police. The Ahmedabad police have booked a a case of abetment of suicide under Section 306 of the IPC against the two journalists.
