In New Delhi, the Jawahar Lal Nehru University, which is popularly known as JNU, is a strong bastion of communists. Many of its professors have strong left-wing orientation. This place is also a hotbed of radical feminism. Khurshid Anwar, aged 55, is a former student of JNU and he a communist, who used to run a Non-Government Organization (NGO) known as the Institute for Social Democracy. He was a male feminist and just like other male feminists, all through his life he never bothered about false allegations of rape and their possible impact on the innocent men, who are accused. In fact, he may have even believed that the percentage of false allegations are miniscule or less than 2% and hence not worth any attention, which is the standard Feminist line.
After an incident of rape of a young women one a bus in Delhi, violent protests broke out in Delhi, as many people read in the international news. Khurshid Anwar, his NGO, and his fellow comrades organised many of these protests. Pictures in his Facebook profile show him leading one such protest and he standing next to the police barricade.
On 18th December, less than 1 year of the protests that Kurshid Anwar organised, he committed suicide by jumping from his building, after media started flashing news that he allegedly raped a young feminist colleague, working in another NGO. The alleged incident happened in the month of September in his house, where some members of an NGO had organised a party.
His dead body was taken to Communist Party headquarters in New Delhi. The communist journalists and feminists then started claiming “trial by media.” It is Indian communists and feminist NGOs, who had campaigned for decades for draconian rape laws, which leave no scope for an innocent man to prove his innocence during the investigation stage, let alone have the presumption of innocence. Thanks to these activists and their allies, men accused of rape are presumed guilty until proven innocent and they are degraded in media and sent to prison for months, after which they are released on bail as the trial starts.
Now, when one of their own comrades dies, the communists are in a tight spot. Given their political stands around feminism, they can not talk about misuse of rape laws or false allegations. They know, Indian MRAs control the “Misuse” meme and they do not want MRAs to prove their points. So, they started blaming “trial by media.” When they have championed for laws that presume any man accused of rape as guilty, then they themselves have given media the right to presume guilt and present the news story using that context. Needless to say, there were thousands of cases in India, where media has termed innocent men as rapists and monsters before even the trial started. However, the communists and feminists never had a problem with that. The Indian Supreme Court has also warned about trial by media and the harm it causes to possibly innocent accused. But, war mongering communists and feminists always opposed that argument.
Indian Express published a part of facebook post that Khurshid Anwar sent to a friend (link).
He was referring to an impromptu party, organised at his house by members of an NGO:
Everybody consumed alcohol. After consuming alcohol, a girl began to feel unwell. I don’t know when somebody made her lie down in my bedroom. I was sitting in the drawing room with the others. Then came the time to leave. I had called two taxis to ensure that everybody could go back and that nobody stayed back.
According to his post, the woman was left at his house despite his concerns.
One person announced that everybody should leave the place and let the girl rest in my house. The person who made the announcement wasn’t ready to stay over herself. But I thought that since this girl was unwell, she should be looked after by a woman only.
Anwar claims in his post that the girl began crying after a while. When he checked on her, Anwar claims she made comments, but he returned to the drawing room.According to Anwar’s letter, the next morning the girl accused him of spiking her drink.
She came into the drawing room and demanded of me what she had last night. I was shocked. I said, ‘Stop it’ and asked her to shut up. A girl says those words to me thrice. Why? I kept thinking over this but didn’t think it was a conspiracy at that point.
Anwar also says he spoke to a member of the NGO about the incident, but nothing happened for a few days.
Then I found out that I was being blamed. The members of the NGO who I knew beforehand stopped talking to me. The friend told me they had met the girl. Even after repeated requests, they refused to meet me. Why? I don’t know. Then after a few days, around 8 to 10 people came over to meet me. I also called over somebody from my side. I found out later that one of the members of the NGO was saying that she will put me in trouble.
In the meanwhile, Khurshid Anwar’s separated wife, who is also a feminist, claimed that this media coverage is anti-women. His separated wife, Dr.Meenakshi Sundriyal, is a professor of JNU. At the Press Club of India here on Sunday, Dr. Sundriyal said (link):
“I have been an office bearer of the Gender Sensitisation Committee at Jawaharlal Nehru University. I can say that when we try to take matters into our own hands and not follow laid-down procedures on sensitive matters such as rape, it is usually the women who suffer. Those branding him as a rapist on various media platforms did not follow the process of law and instead took matters into their own hands.”
Hearing this, Indian MRAs are saying, “what the hell she is talking?”
In this particular case, the victim’s statement was enough to presume Khurshid Anwar guilty and if he had not committed suicide, then he would have been sent to prison for at least a couple of months anyway. Then, the media would have discussed this story for one or two weeks defaming and degrading him. There is no process or mechanism built into India’s rape laws or police’s investigation processes to filter out innocents and dismiss the claims of a complainant. So, media trial on rape accused is entirely unavoidable.
Is this entire episode going to help stop misuse of rape laws? It is highly unlikely. The communists and their feminist leaders like Kavita Krishnan are now calling for husbands accused of raping their wives also to be presumed guilty and to be subjected to the same pre-trial detentions and imprisonment as any other man accused of committing rape.
These communists are anarchists and they stupidly forgot that their own male feminists are also at the risk getting false rape charges. When it happened, they are attempting to blame someone else, in this case the media, rather than doing any soul-searching. It is just a matter of time, they will argue again in the media that false rape cases are too few and no woman must be punished for false rape allegations, because that will hamper reporting of incidents of rape. For only they can be innocent.
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