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Arnab Says He Was At 2002 Riots, Twitter Sends Him To More Places He Was “Apparently” At

byRachna Srivastava
20th September 2017
3 minute read
Arnab-Goswami-2002-Riots-Twitter

It was just about a month ago that a video of Arnab Goswami citing an anecdote from his reporting of the 2002 Gujarat riots went viral. It seems that the video is not going to make its impact be felt any bit lesser.

After the video was doing rounds on the inter-web, his contemporary and once his co-worker, Rajdeep Sardesai called him out and said he was blatantly lying and wasn’t even in Gujarat at that time.

Sardesai also added how Arnab’s incident bore stark similarities with what he personally faced in Gujarat with a few more journalists. An incident which is mentioned in his book.

He also called Goswami a feku.

 

According to an India Today report, here’s what Arnab narrates the incident as.

“2002. And we came out 50 meters from his residence, we are stopped, suddenly our ambassador car is stopped and there are people who are breaking the windows with “trishuls”. All the windows are broken. It is almost as if there are trishuls all around. I know it’s very unsavoury, but I must share with you the reality of life as I’ve seen it. When that happens, we are all told to reveal our religion. It is 50 metres from the chief minister’s house. How it happened, I don’t know. We said we are journalists. “No, No, what is your religion? What is your religion?”. And, thankfully, let me tell you, there was nobody from the minority community with us. But one of our people; we had our identity cards, press cards. My driver did not have a press card. And I look at… I was sitting in the front [of the car]. I’ve an obsession of sitting in the front seat; I looked to my right and I can see the look on my driver’s face. When people talk about secularism, I’ve seen hate from up close and I know that group of people could have killed him. He had a tattoo. He put up a “Hey Ram” or something on his… it is not a tattoo, it is just an imprint that you put which stays with you. He showed that and we walked out. But I saw for that moment how scared you.”

 

Journalist Sanjeev Singh added weight to Rajdeep’s allegations and confirmed that Arnab wasn’t present at ground zero.

Even Nalin Mehta confirmed the same.

Rajdeep even tweeted the location of the incident.

And then what? Twitter had a lot to say about the episode and they came up with all sorts of reactions. Some even sent Arnab to places he was “allegedly” at.

1. A page from history.

https://twitter.com/autumnrainwish/status/910458197596442624

2. In lands, far and wide…

3. He was, claims the media.

4. He was at every historic event.

https://twitter.com/VenkaiyaNandu/status/910436740795531264

 5. First ever man on the moon!

6. Here’s a picture of the same.

7. Holy Lord!

8. He was also at China.

9. Oh, he was?

https://twitter.com/tejujoshi31/status/910457952863010816

10. Indeed!

11. He did live reporting from there.

12. Who is Christopher Columbus?

13. He met T-Rex in person. (Oh, that was Jurassic Park).

14. Oh mitwa, sunn mitwa.

Though Arnab Goswami might’ve not issued any clarification upon his end, Twitter certainly knows how to have a good laugh about things.

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