New Delhi: The Ministry of Railways on Friday defended its decision to take down 285 media links, containing videos of the stampede that occurred at the New Delhi Railway Station on February 15.
Eighteen people lost their lives in the stampede and several others were injured.
This order was issued on February 17 and ‘X’ was asked to drop the links within 36 hours.
“We are not trying to suppress facts. Nor is this an attempt to muffle the media. Nowhere has the Indian Railways said that nothing of that sort happened. This was an unfortunate accident and the reasons are being probed by a high-level committee. Certain corrective measures have also been taken. All that we have asked is for the gruesome videos to be removed as there are issues of privacy concerned,” a top official of the Railway Board told Odisha Bytes.
According to him, the graphic content comprises footage of bodies of women and children being trampled upon by others. Such things happen during a stampede when people are not in their right senses and the only aim is to reach safety, he said.
“We firmly believe that circulation of such videos hurts the dignity of not only those who died, but also their grieving family members. Preservation of dignity of the dead is a rule that is followed across the world. By now, everybody concerned with the official investigation has gone through the relevant portions of the footage. Hence, there is no need to keep them in circulation any longer. There is a possibility of the videos being misused. This may lead to law-and-order issues and damage to property,” the official said.
A railway ministry official claimed that such videos have been misused by miscreants to cause unrest, in the past. Even during the Mahakumbh Mela, several old videos from other locations were circulated in an attempt to establish that multiple stampedes occurred and hundreds were killed, he said.
The Opposition has trained its guns on the Government after the stampede at the railway station, with some leaders claiming that the death toll is much higher than the officially declared figure of 18. The official claimed these to be baseless allegations.
“Have they got any evidence? Has anybody come up with a complaint that a relative or friend is missing? Or, do they mean to say that there were a lot of homeless people, without any relatives or friends, present at the station on that day? In today’s world a person can’t just disappear without somebody raising an alarm. Such things happened in the past when information took days, or even months, to reach one place from the other,” the railway ministry official said.
The Ministry of Railways was accorded direct takedown powers in December, 2024. In January this year, it exercised these powers for the first time by ordering YouTube and Instagram to delete certain videos that could affect operational safety and security.
