Indian Express - biased reporting/ a planted anti article?

[hvj1]

After two days to cool off, I was in a reasonable frame of mind to reply, which is as follows;

Dear Sirs,
This refers to your editorial ‘Target practice’ on Friday, Aug.20. First and foremost, whoever has written this article, I sincerely appreciate the good fortune of this person and Pray to God, that he/she and family along with their entire neighbourhood, in fact the whole city in which he/she resides, as a matter of fact the entire country, nay mankind in totality, continue to be safe and never have to experience any kind of gun related violence.

Having said that and re-reading what I have written, I realise, that with all my good intentions and the author’s this is one prayer which has its limits, which I am certain, both the honourable author and I realise.

Truth of the matter is, that even if guns are removed from our daily lives, violence cannot be removed till such time the entire human race collectively evolves to a higher plane of existence, where violence is eliminated altogether!

Now the author will be the first to agree with me, that we are quite far from such an utopian ideal. Hence we need to confront reality as it bites today. “God helps those, who help themselves,” a case in point is the brave girl from J&K, who otherwise is a person who would shun all forms of violence, guns included, was forced to protect her family and herself, by taking the incredibly bold action of snatching the gun from the terrorist and shooting him with it, causing his cowardly colleague to flee, thus saving her family. This is what is meant by, “God helps those, who help themselves”.

With the skewed ratio of policemen to citizens in India, it is ultimately left to the citizen to protect his/her family, property when attacked by a bunch of outlaws. When such bad elements are carrying illegal guns, choppers, swords, knives and hell bent on wrecking mayhem on your life, pray do tell me, what should, such a person do?

My family lived in a very remote area, one night, our dogs let off a warning, we spied a group of men, these are the dreaded phansi pardi tribe, who break open houses and kill sleeping individuals by smashing their heads with huge rocks. My father fired two shots IN THE AIR, the intruders vanished. People who own guns, do not always keep them to flaunt their manliness or as you pointed out ‘machismo’.

The group of MPs, you claim to be of ‘cushy’ types, one of which Mr. Nitin Lad, was pleading on behalf of his plantation workers. If one were to deny them licenses, these plantation workers, who live in remote areas are fairly at the mercy of bandits!

And who else is the best authority to decide on issue of arms license, the local District Magistrate or some babu sitting far away in Delhi? How do you expect this babu to even realise what perils visit people living on naxalite infested areas? Or even in areas where no known naxalism threat is perceived? Who will better appreciate the local situation? I am sure , you will agree that it is the local authority who will be in the best position to judge.

If the author is so against weapons and supposedly lax firearms licensing procedures, my sincere and very humble advice is, to go and meet Rukhsar in J&K. Also the village in M.P. where women have stood up and asked for weapon licenses, which were granted by the C.M. If you do not wish to go that far, then meet a few B.P.O. rape victims, or families of those unfortunate girls, who were raped and done to death by their drivers, even though their companies took steps to ensure that their drivers were checked?
Believe me Sir/Madam, with all due respect to your opinion, I request you take the time out and at least visit one such affected victim and or family.
Yours sincerely

[Virendra S Rathore]

nice one .. a needed coolant indeed

[goodboy_mentor]

Excellent. IMHO shame these kind of people by sending CC email to their competitors and other public people. The more awareness we create the better it is.

[goodboy_mentor]

Our emails seemed to have made Indian Express see some sense, they have unhoisted the biased article. Now getting the message: "Sorry, The page you have requested has either expired or cannot be found. Please click here to go to our home page."

[hvj1]

Face saving tactics

[Virendra S Rathore]

Yeah they do it quite often .. not only them .. many others

[nagarifle]

go for it

[mundaire]

more likely than not - they are having tech issues with their website ... which incidentally is really shite! and no, I'm not saying this based on the content of their article... it simply doesn't match up to what one would expect from the website of a National daily.