There may be a new twist to the tale of the attack on the senior journalist Rajdeep Sardesai. According to a report on NewsLaundry, a man named Yogesh Tibrewal boasted on Facebook how he attacked Sardesai on the sly in the course of a scuffle. Senior journalist and consulting editor at India Today, Rajdeep Sardesai was allegedly manhandled by a mob of Modi supporters outside Madison Square Garden while PM Narendra Modi was giving a speech in inside.
The screenshot of his Facebook post with a picture of him next to Rajdeep Sardesai has been widely circulated on Twitter. The screen grab captures the following conversation between Tibrewal and his friends:
Ajith Doshi: Bhai isko maar padhi thi aaj… You were too close to the danger.
Yogesh Tibrewal: Mai hi tha woh danger!
Pravin Mukkawar: Maraa ki nahi… I hope achhe se dia hoga tumne usko.
Yogesh Tibrewal: Haa bey, usko malum bhi nahin pada.
According to Newslaundry, they have contacted Yogesh to know why he has deleted the Facebook account — or rather renamed the profile as Vicks Jhujhnu — but have not received a response. For now, it is unclear whether this was just an empty boast by Tibrewal or if he did actually attack the journalist.
The video footage of the incident has been widely circulated on YouTube and Twitter. While some YouTube clips showed Rajdeep getting attacked, another that showed Rajdeep calling a guy in a yellow kurta an asshole, which ultimately led to the fight.
Meanwhile Achint Sharma, the Deputy News Editor at the Dainik Bhaskar, had posted an eye-witness account on his Facebook saying that he had seen the crowd heckling Rajdeep who had been patient for quite some time.
Sharma wrote that after the speech was over, he was talking a walk down 7th Avenue in New York when he saw “Rajdeep Sardesai and a senior cameraperson in the middle of a mob trying to calm down a group of approximately 50 people around him. My first Reaction: Are these guys for real?”
He added, “Second reaction: To see if any other TV crew was there, none! I barge in, just to check if Rajdeep was alright. Yes, he was. Smiling, calm, and trying to reason out a crowd which wasn’t prepared to listen to anything he said. Then the pushing and shoving begins. A barrage of abuses follow. Why? Probably because of Rajdeep’s tweet about an influential person staying in the same hotel as Narendra Modi’s.”
According to Sharma’s account, “Despite my repeated requests to stay away from Rajdeep, the mob continued to shout pro-Modi slogans right in front of his face to instigate him. A particular person wearing glasses, and once again in an orange attire, almost shoved his phone into the cameraman’s lens to which Rajdeep protested.”
He adds that while some people in the mob have release selective footage which shows Rajdeep attacking first, nobody has dared to release the full footage which shows the crowd heckling Rajdeep.
Sardesai, had tweeted after the incident, “Great crowd at Modison square garden! except a few idiots who still believe abuse is a way of proving their machismo!” He added, “Glad we caught the idiots on cam. Only way to shame the mob is to show them”.
After the prime minister’s speech, he tweeted: “Super speech by Modi; not so super behaviour by some bhakts. Guess some things won’t change.”
After the incident, Twitter saw a barrage of tweets and opinions. The hashtag, #IStandWithRajdeep and #RajdeepSlapped were the top trends.
