[Reader-list] resending first posting by biswajit and nilanjan

[sabuj mukherjee]

Well, we’re not saying that the way media covered the hanging of Dhananjay Chatterjee has been responsible for the death of several children experimenting with the noose. After all, we have been in the media ourselves as ‘working journalists’ (ever heard of a non-working one?) for so many years. We can’t blame the media, like politicians, for all the evil in society. Rather, it is the task of the media to point out what is going wrong in the society. Wait. Let us ask ourselves, did the media do that in this case? Did the media do anything that could prevent this tragedy?
For the record: The topic of our study is the media coverage of Dhananjay Chatterjee’s judicial execution and its impact on children. Chatterjee was a rape and murder accused who was hanged at Kolkata’s Alipore Central Jail (it’s called ‘Correctional Home’ nowadays, but we are unable to calculate the correctional coefficient of the torque of the hangman’s noose on the prisoner’s neck – sorry about that) before dawn on 14 August 2004. On the eve of the Independence Day, that is (hangings have had a close relationship with Independence, isn’t it?). With that, India broke its more than a decade old virtual moratorium on the execution of capital punishment. A strong message to the world!
We are now rummaging through the files of old dailies to recollect how they presented the news the morning after. And what do we have here? Let us pick four newspapers of 14 August 2004 at random. Each one of them, to be sure, has the item as the front-page lead. The largest circulation Bengali daily (about a milllion), Ananda Bazar Patrika, has the largest headline, ‘The message went out: It’s over, Sir’, running through all eight columns. Under this, a two-column subhead: ‘Forgive me if I’ve made any mistakes’. The first one is a supposed quote from a jail official to his superior, the second from the prisoner to the inspector-general (prison). And if you think the prisoner was repenting for his misdeeds, read on – he was just being cordial in his last hour, not asking for mercy but gently taking leave of his hosts, the jail department. The whole front page is devoted to the hanging. Besides the main news, the two others are: ‘There are many criminals, I’m being hanged because I’m poor’ and ‘Purnima breaks down at the first train’s whistle’. While the former one is a supposed compilation of Dhananjay’s last quotes as narrated by the jail staff, the latter is a description of the scenes at his village Kuldiha in Bankura district, and at Jamdoba, the parental village of his wife, Purnima. The lead picture, spread over six columns, gives us a view of Dhananjay’s feet through glass door of the corpse carrier taking his body to the crematorium. Below, there’s a single-column close-up of the grieving wife. The layout is complete with a graphics captioned: ‘The last four hours’.
Next, we take Bartaman, arguably the second largest (with a 4,00,000-plus circulation). ‘Dhananjay hanged’, the straightforward headline says, with the subhead: ‘Eye donation wish unfulfilled’. In a neat cluster, three other related pieces say: ‘Family members keep awake all night hoping for a miracle’, ‘He broke down in tears when the order was read out’, and ‘Special prayers at Hetal’s school after hanging’. Special prayers at the school where Hetal Parekh, Dhananjay’s teenage victim, used to read? Was it because of the triumph of justice? Was it because of the end of evil? No. The caption of the lead picture, showing the school girls praying, clearly says: ‘Special prayers for Dhananjay on Saturday
” Prayers for the rapist and murderer of a minor girl?
Actually, it was a prayer for both Dhananjay and Hetal, clarified the caption in Dainik Statesman. Here, too, it’s the lead picture. ‘I am innocent, God bless you’ screams the headline, with a strap: ‘Dhananjay’s last words before the hanging’.
Okay, now we have Ganashakti in our hand. The Bengali daily organ of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), major partners of the ruling Left Front in West Bengal. The headline, as expected, is matter-of-fact: ‘Dhananjay’s hanging according to schedule’. One more example of the newly introduced “work culture” at government departments in the state. But read the first few lines. “He didn’t look perturbed for a moment. He took a bath, put on new clothes, ate a little curd and sweets, and climbed on to the alter. A few minutes’ wait. Saturday 4:30 A.M. Dhananjay Chatterjee was bade the last farewell from Alipore Central Jail.”
Do we see a tacit sympathy for the prisoner on the gallows in all of these newspaper reports? Or are we missing a point?
What do you think, dear readers?

Biswajit Roy and Nilanjan Dutta
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