When Head Constable with Delhi Police, Salim PK was filmed on camera, staggering and falling in the Delhi metro, the video titled Drunk Delhi Policeman on Delhi metro-Funny went so viral that it got over two-lakh views per day. The Quint had also reported the story when the video had surfaced.
For Salim, however, the misleading video which tainted his image was nothing short of a nightmare. After getting a clean chit from Police Commissioner BS Bassi, the 50-year-old cop, who is posted at Civil Lines police station, approached the Supreme Court crying foul at the “worst kind of defamation one can suffer through social media”, Daily Mail reported.
Salim claimed that he was not drunk and that he was ill. And a police enquiry into Salim’s medical record verified that Salim’s claims were indeed true.
His disorientated and dizzy state was the result of acute health problems and partial paralysis of his body.Excerpt of Dail Mail report
Salim’s lawyer Wills Mathews told the Daily Mail that every newspaper and TV channel reported on the incident when the video went viral but when the truth of the incident was revealed, nobody reported on it.
Otherwise the only option for the petitioner was to live and suffer in silence as it is humanly impossible for him to locate the source of the video, or to take legal action against the thousands of print, visual and social media, particularly when the petitioner himself is half-paralysed, with serious economic, health, emotional, and physical disabilities, who has to take care of his wife who had a serious heart attack after this incident, along with the aged father of the petitioner who is paralysed for the last more than five years.
The police department apologised and declared his suspension period as “spent on duty”.
Salim, who is in his native state, Kerala on a three months medical leave, wants the Delhi government, Police Commissioner, Delhi Metro Rail Corporation and the Press Council of India to take steps so that he can “regain his lost dignity by publishing the correct factual position in some prominent places, print and electronic media”.
Read the full article on Daily Mail.
(At The Quint, we are answerable only to our audience. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member. Because the truth is worth it.)