The suicide of Geethanjali, a beneficiary of house site pattas in Andhra Pradesh, has hugely dented the already sagging image of the Telugu Desam Party with elections just round the corner. There is a wave of anger against the sympathisers of the TDP and Janasena who trolled her relentlessly ever since she shared her joy over receiving the house site patta and allegedly forced her to the extreme step.
The overwhelming perception is that the so-called ‘social media warriors’ of the two opposition parties were unable to digest the woman praising YS Jaganmohan Reddy for ensuring house site pattas for the poor. They blitzed her with a torrent of abuses and character-assassinating insinuations as part of a targeted vilification campaign. Depressed and distressed, Geethanjali, a woman from the weaker sections, reportedly threw herself under a running train in what is being strongly believed as a suicide attempt in Guntur district on March 7.
On March 10, she succumbed to the injuries at the Guntur Government Hospital, sparking off widespread condemnation of the Taliban-style barbaric social media attack against her by the TDP and Janasena netizens. Even as Geethanjali’s husband, who ekes out his livelihood as a goldsmith, lodged a police complaint, a battery of the ruling YSRCP leaders have mounted an all-out attack against their political opponents, demanding stringent punishment for the perpetrators of this heinous attack.
Given the sensitivity of the incident and the magnitude of its impact out in the public, one would have only expected the TDP to act in a way to diffuse the situation. But strangely, the actions of the opposition party in the last two days only seem to be making things messier for itself. It is giving rise to the feeling that the party is falling in its own trap. The TDP has been attempting to portray the suicide of the backward classes woman as a train accident, which appears to be only back-firing. In the same breath, many social media posts have sprouted to insinuate that two young leaders of the YSRCP are behind the woman’s death, with no clinching evidence to buttress their claims.
To make matters worse, a more recent video posted on the party’s official twitter handle ‘@JaiTDP’ is only adding fuel to the public fury. The video shows visuals of Geethanjali in an unconscious state soon after the train incident. Interestingly, it carries an audio track of two men talking about the incident and claiming that the woman was pushed under the moving train by two men. The video soon turned out to be a huge embarrassment amid allegations that it was doctored and the audio track in it was not original.
The conspiracy theorists say that the iTDP, the social media wing of the TDP and believed to function under the control of Nara Lokesh, is adept at creating such fake videos and audios. They allege that a separate audio track was created in this case and packaged with Geethanjali visuals to induce a false impression among the viewers that there was some foul-play in the incident.
A few other obnoxious posts were also posted from the TDP twitter handle, aimed at implicating the ruling YSRCP as the masterminds of Geethanjali’s death. On one side, the TDP maintains that it has nothing to do with the tragic death but posts like these screaming on its official social media handle run straight in its face. The Andhra Pradesh police have already taken up the case seriously under the directions of Chief Minister YS Jagan to punish the abetters of Geethanjali’s suicide. There is every likelihood of the investigators scrutinising all the stuff being posted on the TDP social media handles, which will only mean more trouble for the beleaguered opposition party.
The TDP is already accused of its involvement in the recent filthy attacks on social media against YS Sharmila and Narredy Sunitha with fake accounts. And the latest social media stuff over Geethanjali’s death, if proven to be fake, is likely to result in far-reaching consequences for it in the near future.