India Today has taken senior anchor and consulting editor Rajdeep Sardesai off the air for two weeks for a tweet about farmer’s death during a tractor rally on Republic Day and has died in police firing.
Allegedly, the channel has also deducted a month’s salary from the anchor.
However, Sardesai has refused to comment on this incident.
Since the past two months, thousands of farmers have been camping on the outskirts of Delhi to demand the withdrawal of the three new farm laws. On Tuesday, a tractor parade of farmers to coincide with Republic Day celebrations which later turned into chaos when some farmers diverged from agreed routes and broke through barricades.
Further, the situation escalated when the police responded by using tear gas and batons on the protestors.
The Delhi Police stated that 394 of their officers had been injured during the incident across the city. However, it wasn’t clear how many protestors had been injured, but one farmer died in the ITO area.
The Delhi Police said that the farmer had died in an accident while protestors alleged that the farmer was shot.
While the farm protestors claim that the deceased Navneet Singh was shot at by Delhi police while on a tractor, this video clearly shows that the tractor overturned while trying to break the police barricades. The farm protestors allegations don’t stand. Post mortem awaited.👇 pic.twitter.com/JnuU05psgR
— Rajdeep Sardesai (@sardesairajdeep) January 26, 2021
The Delhi Police in their defence released a video shot at the ITO area in which a tractor can be seen crashing into a barrier and overturning. Hours after this video was released, Sardesai retracted his statement.
“While the farm protestors claim that the deceased Navneet Singh was shot at by Delhi police while on a tractor, this video clearly shows that the tractor overturned while trying to break the police barricades,” he wrote on Twitter. “The farm protestors’ allegations don’t stand. Postmortem awaited.” He also wrote that farmers had told him the protestor was shot at. “One person, 45-year-old Navneet killed allegedly in police firing at ITO,” he wrote. “Farmers tell me: the ‘sacrifice’ will not go in vain.”
Several BJP leaders said that this was not enough and demanded that a first information report to be filed against him or that he be sacked for spreading “fake news
