A journalist, who worked with a top English news channel during the Arushi-Hemraj murder case, has come out with her account of how the media at that time was complicit in changing the narrative of the case against the Talwars.
Sonorita Chauhan, who was on Times Now’s news desk, posted her observations and account after reading Avirook Sen’s Aarushi.
In a Facebook post dated August 18th, Sonorita wrote,
The reporter on the ground gave me ‘gossip’ behind the ‘wife swapping’ couple next morning, none of which went into my copy. Today, I find myself wondering what his sources could have been for the baseless, needless masala that he shared with me. He wasn’t alone, almost all reporters lapped up the ‘juicy’ fictitious details of the Talwars’ lifestyle. Who else could be the source but the household helps, and it were most certainly Aarushi’s killers who planted these stories. The killers who roam at large even as the parents lose their minds in jail.
Sonorita admits being a “part of the media that helped perpetuate this lie”.
Almost none of the reporters covering the case actually did any real groundwork. They only parroted the CBI’s version of events, every single time – shaping the public perception against the Talwars and tarnishing their image. This helped make the CBI’s version of the story become ingrained in public memory, so much that it began to be regarded as the fact.
Recalling her experience with her then boss, Arnab Goswami, Sonorita observed,
Nupur Talwar’s exclusive interview to NDTV has been quoted by many as the reason they think the Talwars are guilty, because she did not cry. But the media helped shape the guilty verdict against them as well. Times Now Editor-in-Chief [Arnab Goswami] [was] infuriated with the fact that Nupur Talwar had decided to give an interview to one of his nemesis – NDTV.
He [Arnab] asked me to find holes in her version of events, even as she was giving the interview. Her story was juxtaposed with the idiot Gurcharan Singh’s mind-numbingly stupid press conference, where he insisted on calling Aarushi ‘Shruti’. How could he have been taken seriously after that, I don’t know.
At the time, Gurcharan Singh was IG of Meerut Range.
You can read Sonorita’s Facebook post here.
(The original post was edited for clarity by The Quint while quoting.)
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