BJP MP questions role of media over Yakub sentence
NEW DELHI: BJP MP Anurag Thakur on Friday raised questions over the kind of play given by some sections of media to Mumbai blasts convict Yakub Memon, who was hanged on Thursday, and expressed concern over it.
Raising the issue in Lok Sabha, he said media should show responsibility towards national interest and not propagate what a few individuals may say in the name of human rights. “In the recent days, you would have seen regular discussions in media on a terrorist…
There has been talk about his human rights but not his responsibilities,” he said, in clear reference to Memon about whom the media held a number of debates deliberating on the sentence to hang him in connection with the 1993 blasts in Mumbai.
“Innocent people get killed but they get little play in the media but their killers are played up in a big way. We are concerned over this,” the BJP member from Himachal Pradesh said. He said Memon was given death sentence 23 years after the bomb blasts by the Supreme Court and questioned what a “few intellectuals discuss after retirement (on it)?” He said it is “painful” to see discussions on the justice that innocent people got after a wait of 23 years.
“It is regrettable that India has come to become a soft target for terrorists,” Thakur said and attacked the opposition for stalling the House instead of discussing the issue.
“I feel that there is a big challenge before India… If a flag (of Pakistan or ISIS) is raised in one corner of the country, it is transmitted to 40 crore people across the country… Who is transmitting it?… Should we not be worried about it,” he said, suggesting that media should think about its responsibility.
He said the Opposition, instead of discussing about the nation, was trying to take political mileage.
