I must admit, I did sense something fishy about this story of a sting operation uncovering a teacher’s involvment in coercing her students to enter prostitution. Now it turns out it was all made up.
Rashmi Singh, the young woman posing as a student-turned-prostitute, was neither of those things, police say, but appears to have been an ambitious reporter looking to make her mark.
The reporter posing as a customer, Prakash Singh, was allegedly working with someone whom the teacher owed money to, according to authorities.
And the teacher, Uma Khurana, who was fired from her job and spent 10 days in jail, was “more of a victim than an offender,” judge Alok Agrawal said when he ordered her released on bail Monday.
That fake sting operation — dubbed “Stink Operation” by local newspapers — is a glaring example of the dishonesty some say is rife in India’s hyper-competitive media world.
It’s really disturbing the power that media can wield here, seeing as how this show instigated a mob to try and take justice into it’s own hands. This problem brings to light the intense competition and questionable reporting in the media here, in the context of a proposed Broadcast Bill which borders on draconian censorship.
