A BJP MLA posts a video of a bleeding, weeping girl and tells his followers she is being taught a lesson. The video is actually from Varanasi, from a domestic violence case, and has nothing to do with the protest. It does not matter. The comments say: she didn’t get beaten enough.

In the two weeks since the Cockroach Janata Party’s July 20 Parliament march, more than half a dozen women and girls who appeared in clips from CJP protests have been identified across X, Instagram and Facebook – by an elected legislator, by Hindutva handles with large followings, by strangers who have sought to file police complaints and published home addresses. They face threats of rape and death.

There are other consequences too. A yoga instructor has lost many of her clients, a widowed mother has lost her tuition work, a teenager’s family home stands locked. 

The case that has drawn the most television attention is that of Ruchika Singh, a 15-year-old filmed at Jantar Mantar using expletives against Prime Minister Modi, who now faces charges of defamation and “intentional insult to provoke breach of peace”. Late on Friday night, Modi posted a video saying he had been subjected to all kinds of abuse during the protests, and that he forgave everyone. She posted her own soon after – she had fallen under the influence of certain YouTubers that day, she said; she was ashamed; she apologised to him and to the country.

It did not end. Users began matching stills from the apology against footage from the protest – eyebrows, nose piercings, hair colour, teeth – to argue that the two were different girls. An account named Khetan Anup posted several such videos. “The two girls don’t look alike,” one caption read. “Something seems fishy here.”

The case against Ruchika

Ravi Negi, the BJP MLA from East Delhi's Patparganj constituency, known locally for turning up in Mayur Vihar to demand shopkeepers’ names, shared the Varanasi video on his social media account days after the march. He then shared a second video, filmed inside his own office, showing two or three men seated around him working out a girl’s address. She is a resident of Mandawali, in East Delhi, they establish. “First, we will have her summoned to the police station,” Negi says. In another video, he says: “We will definitely find the girl today or tomorrow. She will have to apologise in a public place. We will take legal action against her.”

The girl from Mandawali had raised........

© newslaundry