This has to stop. The fundamental right to freedom of speech and expression conferred upon all citizens by the Constitution isn’t a licence to misuse it.
Despite the CBI (Central Bureau of Investigation) having established a strong prima facie case against an unnamed class XI student of the Ryan International School, Gurgaon in the tragic murder of primary student Pradyuman Thakur (7) in the school’s toilet on September 8, which exonerates the school’s proprietors, the Pinto family on charges of gross negligence, popular television news anchor Arnab Goswami is unwilling to stop the on-air persecution of the Pintos. Ab initio he has been demanding the arrest of Mumbai-based Ryan Pinto, CEO of the Ryan International Group of Institutions (RIGI) and chairman and managing director Augustine and Grace Pinto. Now he regularly airs the absurd speculation that the God-fearing Ryan Group top management was aware of the involvement of the class XI student in Pradyuman’s heinous murder and colluded with the corrupt Haryana state police to pin the murder on Ashok Kumar, the conductor of the school bus. This speculation is impossible to entertain about the Pintos who invoke the name of Jesus at every turn.
In this connection, the schizophrenic prejudice of Goswami and the editors of most mainstream media against private schools despite all of them having availed private school education, is curious. They seem blissfully unaware that almost 50 percent of all school-going children have voluntarily fled from the pathetically dysfunctional government schools to India’s 320,000 fees-levying private schools. As such, the Pintos have done a great service to Indian education by establishing 135 K-12 schools at all price points over the past 40 years, contributing tens of thousands of well-educated, English-fluent youth to the Indian economy.
At the same time, these schizo media worthies have little time to focus on ways and means to improve the pathetic condition of government schools to which children of bottom-of-pyramid households are sentenced. My dear Sir, there is a line between fair comment and vindictive persecution.