An anonymous tipster sent in a news story which has haunted me since I read it. Sick, sick, sick:
A group of television journalists gave a man matches and diesel to help him commit suicide in order to get dramatic footage which was later broadcast on the news, police said on Thursday.
The man died from severe burns to his body in hospital in Gaya town of Bihar on August 15, Independence Day.
These people aren’t journalists, they are criminals.
Footage of the man, screaming and writhing in pain as he ran with his back on fire, was aired on several television channels. Police identified the man as Manoj Mishra.
“We have seized footage clearly showing a group of journalists handing over matches and some inflammable substance — which we later verified to be diesel — to the victim,” acting Gaya police chief P.K. Sinha told Reuters by telephone.
It’s really depressing that people could be this callous, this heartless. Taking advantage of someone troubled, for what? Sensational footage?
Mishra, who worked as a delivery man, was upset over what he said was a large sum of money owed to him by a state-run dairy farm whose milk he transported to customers, police said.
They handed him a flammable substance and matches, filmed this atrocity and then…
The TV crews left the scene without aiding Mishra who suffered burns to over 70 percent of his body, Sinha said.
Why would such cold-blooded bastards do this in the first place?
There has been an explosion of private TV news channels in recent years in India, each competing aggressively for exclusive stories and dramatic footage.
These channels often show graphic footage of victims of bomb blasts and other violence as well as partly blurred pictures of sex acts while exposing scandals as part of sting operations.
