Finding a scapegoat whenever there is a tragic incident has always been a time-tested strategy to divert the attention and to pervade a ‘culture of fear’, be it the spread of Covid-19 or the recent train accident in Odisha’s Balasore that has claimed 275 lives and injured more than 1,100 people.
Following the Odisha train accident, Muslims have become the target of right-wing social media handles.
While the families were mourning the deaths of their close ones, some social media handles with earlier credentials of peddling fake news and Hindutva propaganda conspicuously started blaming Muslims for an alleged ‘sabotage’.
On June 3, a day after the accident, the Twitter handle @randomsena posted a picture of the site with an arrow directed to a white building with a tomb and wrote “just saying - yesterday was Friday”. It was immediately interpreted by Twitterati as an indication that the structure was a mosque and it was a jumma when Muslims offer the weekly prayers — so Muslims might be involved in the accident.
The tweet went viral and garnered 4 million views and around 4,500 retweets. On the same day, they posted another tweet saying “Balasore is a hub of illegal Rohingya Muslims”. This tweet also got traction online and was viewed by 198.4k people. Later, defending this post, they used abusive words in a thread on Twitter and pointed out that they never mentioned Muslims in the original tweet. Rather it was the people who took up the charges on their own.
Fact-checking website Alt News, however, busted the myth and found out that the structure was actually a temple run by International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON). A twitter handle known as Prof. N John Camm, who claimed to be a cardiologist based in Germany, termed it ‘Rail Jihad’, reports Scroll.
Notably, all of these accounts were earlier found on several occasions to be posting inflammatory comments aligned to the Hindutva agenda.
Taking note of the communalisation of the accident, the Odisha Police tweeted, “It has come to notice that some social media handles are mischievously giving a communal colour to the tragic train accident at Balasore. This is highly unfortunate.”
The police also appealed to the people to desist from circulating such “false and ill-motivated posts”.
“Severe legal action will be initiated against those who are trying to create communal disharmony by spreading rumours,” said the police.
The Twitter account with the name The Random Indian, however, continued casting aspersions on Mohammad Zubair of Alt News and asked the people for help as they were called out. Tagging the Bihar Police, they also alleged that the account holder’s father had been badly beaten by some recovery agent of money-lender Ankit Sinha.
In their latest tweet, giving an explanation for their reference to Friday, The Random Indian wrote, “In 2009, same train, Coromandel Express got derailed in Odisha, on a Friday. Same train, same state, same day. That’s what I meant by the ‘Friday’ reference but my tweet was misinterpreted by many. So, I’m deleting my tweet to put an end to all of this. But it was actually a Black Friday. I tweeted after reading the Firstpost report & took this photo from twitter account.”
Consequently, they have deleted the post that started the controversy.
This is not the first time that Muslims have been targeted for any tragic incident. Media reports held Tablighi Jamaat culpable for the spread of Covid-19 in 2020. It was followed by the toxic campaigns on different ‘jihads’ —ranging from ‘Love’ to ‘Land’— mostly peddled by right-wing media organisations led by Suresh Chavhanke of Sudarshan News. Balasore was just another addition to the campaign, scholars claim.
