Reading the fine print

Stories of an over stressed techie resorting to murder of his 4 day old daughter have surfaced the internet.

The horrific act was committed by S.Niranjan Kumar( or J.Niranjan Kumar as the Hindu claims), who says that wasn’t ready to have child yet and felt that no one, his wife nor either of their parents understood how he felt. He wanted to spend more time with his wife and fearing that the baby would take up too much of their time, dumped her in a well. This was after he told his wife to get an abortion done and she refused to do so.

However, this post is about something else that I noticed.

On 13th March Indian Express first publishes this. A day later they publish this. The second story (which doesn't make a reference to the earlier story at all) claims of him getting a gold medal while at BITS Pilani. Indian Express even went on to pinpoint that he received a gold medal in Mechanical Engineering while at BITS.

Being a BITSian still on campus, I rushed to the faculty division where on the walls is a huge board with the names of all toppers engraved on it. It has information of toppers from 60s onwards. I saw three columns there: Gold, Silver and Bronze medals.

Clearly, it makes no mention of branches. BITS Pilani doesn’t award degree wise gold medals. The medals are for the topper of a particular batch, irrespective of their degree. And neither can I spot Niranjan’s name anywhere.

Expected better journalistic effort from the Indian Express.

Furthermore there is ambiguity as far as the age of Niranjan and his wife is concerned. HT claims he’s 28, Indian Express says he is 30 (and she is 25) in one article and says he is 28 in the other. And Telegraph suffices with the mean of the two and sticks to 29 (and claims the wife’s age to be 22).

Apart from all this, even when it comes to the actual story, one doesn't know what to believe. Indian Express writes this

Not being able to come to terms with the reality of a child, Niranjan refused to meet Sangeetha in the months before the delivery, even feigning an official trip to China to avoid visiting Chennai to see her, said her relatives. He never called, never mailed — communication was restricted to infrequent chats.

And the Telegraph reports this in their coverage:

Fed up, Sangeetha moved to her parents’ home in Chennai seven months ago. But Niranjankumar kept up the pressure, urging her through emails to abort the baby. He is also alleged to have demanded Rs 5 lakh in extra dowry.