From one WhatsApp to every frontpage: How ‘sources’ dictated the Delhi blast coverage

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on November 13, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/11/13/from-one-whatsapp-to-every-frontpage-how-sources-dictated-the-delhi-blast-coverage

Every time a suspected terror attack takes place in India, you can be certain about how it will play out in the Indian media.  

Without waiting for verifiable information, there will be confident conspiracy scenarios spelt out, it will be pronounced as “terror” even before there is official confirmation, the neighbouring country will be blamed, and those whose names are put out as possible suspects will be broadcast as the perpetrators of the crime even before there is adequate and plausible evidence to charge them. With its desperate need to beat the competition over a 24-hour news cycle, the spin given based on few, or even no facts, by TV channels will send many heads spinning.

Additionally, in today’s divisive political atmosphere, if the suspects happen to be Muslim, then inevitably the hate and invective against an entire community will be aired without any compunction. 

That is precisely what we have witnessed, yet again, after the explosion that killed 13 people and injured many more on the evening of November 10 near the Red Fort metro station in Delhi.  

We know now that it was an explosion in a car. We are told there is certainty about the identity of the person driving the car. And after two days of speculation, hints by “sources” and conspiracy theories set out with great certainty by the usual suspects on mainstream television channels, the Modi government finally issued a statement saying that it was a “heinous terror incident” by “anti-national forces.” The anticipated accusation that Pakistan was behind it, something that has occurred so routinely as to be taken for granted, was not in the statement.

What one should note, however, is that in the preceding two days before this statement, neither the Union Home Ministry, nor the Delhi Police that was on the spot, has held an official briefing for the media.

The reason this stands out as unusual is because in the past, when such incidents took place, the media has been briefed officially, and not through unofficial sources.  

In Mumbai for instance, when serial blasts took place on Mumbai’s suburban trains on July 11, 2006, at peak rush hour, in which 209 people were killed and more than 700 injured, reporters were sent out to the blast sites to speak to survivors and gauge the situation on the ground. But at the same time, the police held official briefings giving out what information it had on hand. There was little room, or for that matter time, for speculation. Mainstream media at that time largely stuck to basic journalistic norms, “err on the side of caution and verify.” In today’s media sphere, that sounds like something in a foreign language. 

In the days following the Mumbai serial blasts, people were questioned, detained and some arrested. Those charged with what was seen as a “terror attack,” faced a trial, were convicted, sent to jail, and some even given the death sentence.

Yet, in July this year, 12 of these men who had been charged and convicted for the 2006 train blasts in Mumbai were acquitted by the Bombay High Court. The court held that the prosecution had “utterly failed” in establishing that these men had committed the crime for which they were charged.  

Indeed, one of the men acquitted earlier this year, Ehtesham Siddiqui, spent 19 years in jail, some of them on death row, before finally being acquitted. Although the Supreme Court has stayed the Bombay High Court ruling, those acquitted, including Siddiqui have not been sent back to jail. While in jail, Siddiqui wrote a book on his experience titled, “Horror saga”. His story is important at a time when once again, people are being interrogated, and some will be charged for a “terror attack”. 

Also worth reading is this article by Aditya Menon in The Quint about previous such incidents in Delhi.

To come back to the Delhi blast, a story that will continue to unravel in the days ahead, it is interesting to view the similarity of the reporting in the national daily newspapers following the incident. None of them could quote a single person from the government who was prepared to go on record. All the reporting was attributed to “sources” which, those who cover the central government will tell you, are based on informal messages sent out to journalists like this one: 

Sharing informally, kindly attribute it to sources: 

•⁠  Raids by security agencies across multiple locations in Delhi-NCR and Pulwama, recovering significant quantities of explosives, are believed to have led the suspect to act hastily under mounting pressure. 

•⁠  ⁠Earlier, during raids carried out on November 9 and 10, 2025, in Faridabad, Haryana, almost 3,000 kg of explosives, along with detonators, timers and other bomb making material were caught and confiscated.  

•⁠  ⁠The explosion was caused by panic and desperation due to raids carried out by the security agencies to nab them.

•⁠  ⁠The bomb was premature and not fully developed, thus limiting the impact.

•⁠  ⁠The explosion did not create a crater, and no shrapnel or projectiles were found.

•⁠  ⁠A major attack has been averted, credited to ‘pan-India alertness and coordinated crackdown’ on suspect modules.

Not surprisingly, the next day’s newspapers reported precisely what was contained in the message quoted above. Incidentally, the name of the suspect driving the car with the explosives, Dr Umar Nabi, was all over the media even before the DNA test had established his identity. As were the names of the other doctors who are suspects in what is being called a “white-collar terror module.” 

Perhaps, given the nature of the media today, with people looking to social media platforms first for “breaking news” followed by mainstream TV channels and only after that to the print media, there is little point in hoping that any of this feeding frenzy, especially after a “terror attack,” will ever change.  

Nor can we expect that this plethora of avenues for information and disinformation that exist today will disappear any day soon.

Reflecting in many ways the wishful thinking of those of us who still believe that credible journalism is possible and needed, Varghese K George, the resident editor of The Hindu in Delhi put out this comment on X after the Delhi blast:

“News cannot be, and should not be, a 24×7 affair. Can we turn back the clock and have news bulletins at periodic intervals? If not three times a day, perhaps four?

"The link between clean public information and democracy is a well-established fact. The positive correlation between misinformation and democratic decline is also an evident fact. Social media is often rightly blamed for this, but legacy media too is complicit in this decadence. At the core of the media’s collapse is the pressure for a constant, unending requirement for ‘updates.’

"The reality is that there is not, and there cannot be, and there should not be, minute-to-minute updates on any news – whether it is a Delhi blast or a Supreme Court hearing. 

"News should happen first, then be processed by experts, and only then transmitted to the public. That is what mediation of information should be about."

“Mediation of information.” Yes, in an ideal world, that is the job of the media.  But is that possible today? Can we really turn back the clock? Or has that train left the station, never to return?

2006 Mumbai blasts are a stark reminder of glaring gaps in terror reportage

Broken News

Published in Newslaundry on July 22, 2025

Link: https://www.newslaundry.com/2025/07/22/2006-mumbai-blasts-are-a-stark-reminder-of-glaring-gaps-in-terror-reportage

 

The acquittal by the Bombay High Court of 12 men accused of being responsible for the 2006 serial bomb blasts on Mumbai’s suburban trains has triggered a much-needed discussion on our criminal justice system, on the police and the investigative agencies, and the absence of closure in so many such cases.

On the evening of July 11, on a typically rainy monsoon day, millions of Mumbaikars made their way to take a train back to their homes. The suburban train system in Mumbai has often been referred to as a “lifeline”. However, on this particular evening, it turned out to be a “death line”. The seven blasts that occurred as the trains pulled into different stations along the route, all in the First-Class compartments, killed 189 people and injured 827.

Even as reporters scrambled to reach the stations, speculation about this being a “terror attack” had started. The front pages of newspapers a couple of days after the blasts carried stories of not just of how Mumbai, a city that apparently never sleeps, leapt back to normal the day after, but reports about how Pakistan was the main suspect behind the blasts. Within a day, a special anti-terror squad, led by senior police officer K P Raghuvanshi, was handed the responsibility to investigate the case. 

Within three months, this anti-terror squad claimed that the case had been solved. It picked up suspects not just in Mumbai but from other cities including Secunderabad. All the suspects were Muslim men. Thirteen of them were charged. 

The case was heard in a trial court which finally gave its ruling in 2015, nine years after the arrests. One man was acquitted, five were awarded death sentences and seven life sentences. Of these, one died in jail before the recent ruling acquitting all.  

Apart from what this case tells us about the criminal justice system and the glacial pace at which it works, there is another question: are there lessons that the media can draw from the coverage of such cases? 

While this case is high-profile and is based in a metropolitan centre like Mumbai, every now and then there are reports about cases of people who have spent long years in jail only to be acquitted of all charges. There are few if any follow-up stories on their families, how they survived, and how the released adjusted back to their lives after release. It’s almost as if such acquittals are so routine that they don’t merit any media attention. 

After the recent Bombay High Court ruling, the founding editor of Maktoob Media, Aslah Kayyalakkath posted this on X which ought to give us in the media a reason to pause and think:

“Since 2020, I have been collecting screenshots of news stories about Muslim men jailed in terror cases. Almost every single one-barring one or two-described these men as ‘terrorists,’ ‘bombmakers,’ ‘fugitives,’ or ‘commanders.’ There were so-called ‘explainers,’ ‘long forms,’ and ‘investigations’ about the ‘crime they committed.’ But remember, these were not stories about convicted men. These were about Muslim men who were accused or suspects. Legally, they were not proven guilty, but not a single media house chose to call them that. Some of them were acquitted because not a single piece of evidence stood against them. These news websites, without any shame or accountability, will publish a small story about the acquittal. They won’t feel regret for being complicit in the vendetta, just like the State doesn’t.”

You can agree or disagree with his point that some news websites are “complicit” but even a cursory glance at news coverage suggests that there is an absence of scepticism and a willing acceptance of the official version of such incidents. 

Going by the reporting in the newspapers on the morning after the Bombay High Court judgment, the coverage has followed a predictable pattern. There are detailed stories on the judgment and explanations about it, there are stories on the anguish felt by survivors of the blast who feel there is no closure, there are detailed sketches of the men released with their photographs (almost identical in each paper as the matter has obviously been supplied by the police), and an occasional piece on how the lawyers of the accused fought the case (including this interesting piece in Indian Express on how RTI was used to access information that blew apart the prosecution’s case). 

Yet, so far, there is little about the families of the accused and what they feel except this article by Tabassum Barnagarwala in Scroll. It is possible that in the days to come, some mainstream newspapers will make the effort to reach out to these families to give their side of the story too. 

Where mainstream media does need to introspect, perhaps an unrealistic expectation, is to look at how such cases are routinely reported from the time the incidents, like these serial train blasts, occur, to when the investigative agencies announce a breakthrough, to the case as it makes its slow way through courts.  

The norm has been to give the official version and leave it at that. The names and faces of the suspects are reported without clarifying that these people are “accused” and not convicted as pointed out by Aslah. That under the justice system, they deserve to be given the benefit of the doubt.  

The men acquitted by the Bombay High Court were not given the benefit of doubt. They were convicted by a court and that was that. Yet this ruling tells us that the story never ends with the first conviction. More so, the judgment itself should instruct us in the media why we need to be sceptical when confessions are readily provided by investigative agencies.

The judgment addresses the use of torture to extract confessions in this case and has termed it “barbaric and inhuman”. It has also questioned the confessions because it found them to be “incomplete and not truthful as some parts are a copy-paste of each other”.

For more details on the kind of torture used on the accused to extract confessions, this is a good time to read Josy Joseph’s book “The Silent Coup: A short history of India’s deep state”.  Published in 2021, Joseph looks at several such “terror” attacks in different parts of the country and raises legitimate questions.

He has a chapter on the 2006 Mumbai blasts in which he interviews the one man who was acquitted in 2015, Wahid Sheikh. In graphic detail, Sheikh describes the torture he went through and how he was framed. Incidentally, since his release in 2015, Sheikh has been part of the team that assembled invaluable evidence that contributed to the ultimate discharge of the accused in this case.

Mainstream media remains in thrall of official versions when it comes to a suspected terror attack. It is as if raising questions on these versions or even trying to unearth some other aspect of the story is “anti-national”.  

From my own experience, I can recall being told by one of my editors that we cannot question an official version as the media does not have the ability to independently verify what happened. This was after I raised questions, as did some others in the media about the daylight encounter killing of three men and one woman by the Gujarat police on June 15, 2004. The media was told that this was a terrorist module on its way to assassinate the then Gujarat Chief Minister, Narendra Modi. The woman shot dead was 19-year-old  Ishrat Jahan, from Mumbra just outside Mumbai. Till today, we do not know the truth as the suspects are dead.  We are left only with what the police want to tell us.