Live From Ground Zero: The Quint’s Best Ground Reports of 2017

As 2017 comes to a close, here are some of our finest reports from the field in the year gone by.

(Photo: The Quint)

Here’s a selection of our best ground reports this year.

From the violence in Panchkula following the Ram Rahim verdict to the ground realities of UP’s anti-Romeo squads, from the ghost town of Karnataka to the tinderbox of West Bengal, The Quint’s reporters travelled to wherever the story lay, to get you every shade of the truth. To find the facts beyond the hype, and search for the stories the headlines missed.

As 2017 comes to a close, here are some of our best ground reports from the year gone by.

1. In Yogi’s UP, Are Anti-Romeos Out to Enforce ‘Indian Morals’?

Are UP’s anti-Romeo squads turning into a moral police? (Photo: PTI)

When UP CM Yogi Adityanath formed anti-Romeo squads across UP, we weren’t really sure about the specifics. What were these squads expected to do? How were they going to make women feel safer? And were they to become the state’s officially sanctioned moral police?

The Quint travelled to Meerut in western UP, a city at the crossroads of modernity and traditionalism, to separate the fact from the fiction – and find out what the anti-Romeo squads of Uttar Pradesh were really up to.

Cops admitting to moral policing, college principals arguing that having a boyfriend is against Indian culture, the Hindu Yuva Vahini ecstatic that CM Adityanath is fighting ‘love jihad’ and the youth divided over all of it – here’s what Meerut had to say on their new government’s flagship move, and the row on moral policing it left in its wake.

Read the full story here.

2. Violence After Ram Rahim Verdict: Reporting Live From Panchkula

Self-styled godman Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted of rape by a CBI court, triggering widespread violence and arson across North India, where 30 people were killed and over 250 injured.

The Quint was at ground zero in Panchkula, reporting live from the site of violence. From an exclusive interview with a Ram Rahim follower who admitted to indulging in violence, to reporting clashes outside Panchkula’s Civil Hospital – we braved threats of assault to get you the story.

Watch more here.

3. Here Is the Ground Reality of an ‘Open Defecation-Free’ UP Village

The Narendra Modi-led government announced that under the ‘Namami Gange’ initiative, 4,480 villages along the Ganga were declared open defecation-free (ODF). The Quint decided to go on the ground and put the claim to the test.

On the other side of the Ganga in Varanasi district is Sujabad village. With a population of 35,000, this village has seen rapid population expansion in the last 10 years.

Here’s what we found.

4. Watch: An Ambedkarite Army Enters the Caste Wars of Uttar Pradesh

On 5 May, a Thakur rally commemorating Maharana Pratap sparked off violence as it passed through a Dalit neighbourhood in the village of Shabbirpur, Uttar Pradesh. The clashes between the two communities left one dead, at least 15 injured and 17 arrested.

And that wasn’t all. The communities clashed again just four days later. How and why had Saharanpur turned into a flashpoint of caste rivalry? Our ground report gives some answers, and raises more questions still.

5. How a Puzzling Death in a Karnataka Town Took on Communal Colour

The mob set fire to the official car of IGP (Western Range) Hemant Nimbalkar in Kumta.(Photo: The Quint)

The entire town came to a standstill. A message that the girl was attacked by two Muslim men had spread on the WhatsApp groups already. Muslims shut shop fearing a backlash, and Hindus closed theirs in protest.

Honnavar turned into a ghost town.

Catch the full story here.

6. Cops Claim Dalits Staged ‘Moustache Attack’ but Facts Don’t Add Up

Digant Maheriya, a 16-year-old Dalit resident of Limbodara village in Gujarat’s Gandhinagar, was allegedly attacked on 3 October by upper caste assailants. On 25 September, his cousin Piyush Parmar had been assaulted by local Rajputs, allegedly for sporting a moustache.

But in a sensational statement days later, Gandhinagar superintendent of police Virendra Singh claimed that the attack on Digant Maheriya was staged by the Dalits themselves. This, even as Dalits across the state continued their protest against the violence by flooding social media with pictures of their moustaches.

The Quint visited the village of Limbodara to get to the bottom of the matter.

7. Baghpat Boat Accident: After 20 People Drown, Locals Blame Govt

In a tragic incident in Baghpat, Uttar Pradesh, a boat capsized in the Yamuna, drowning at least 20 people.

The Quint travelled to Baghpat to find out how the tragedy took place and whether it could have been averted. Was the boat overloaded with passengers? And is there any truth to allegations by the locals that no help came from the government for hours?

8. Grandad, Friend, Lynch Mob Victim: Alimuddin’s Last Eid in Ramgarh

Alimuddin Ansari’s son holds up the only photograph he has of his father, his Aadhaar card.(Photo: Aishwarya S Iyer/The Quint)

Alimuddin Ansari was lynched by a frenzied mob in Ramgarh, Jharkhand on 29 June. The 56-year-old, the youngest of five brothers, was attacked by a group of at least 10 people, who accused him of carrying beef. The mob accosted Alimuddin an hour after he left home that morning. They beat him with sticks and kicked him repeatedly as they formed a ring around him to keep him from escaping their clutches.

When The Quint visited Alimuddin’s house in Manua village, his family was still in mourning.

Here’s the full story.

9. Did Hindu-Muslim Unity Really Go Up in Flames in Odisha’s Bhadrak?

(Photo: IANS)In April, Bhadrak witnessed large-scale communal violence for the first time since the summer of 1991.

The Quint travelled to Bhadrak, 130 kilometres from Odisha’s capital Bhubaneswar, to examine the fallout of the communal violence that struck in April. This ground report explores how a small town turned into a tinderbox. Why was the police caught off guard? And what are the social, political and economic ramifications of the violence?

10. BHU Hostels Lay Empty After Students Fear For Their Safety

After a night of lathicharge on students, multiple hostels in Banaras Hindu University started emptying out with authorities saying that they wouldn't be responsible for the safety of the students on campus.

Here’s our ground report.

11. Yogi’s Beef With Meat and the Bones of Contention

Yogi Adityanath’s crackdown led to more than half of UP’s licensed slaughterhouses to be shut “temporarily” for not following norms.(Photo: The Quint)

How has the Yogi government’s crackdown on slaughterhouses impacted UP’s meat industry? The Quint travelled more than 250 kilometres from the national capital, to the city of Bareilly, to get to the meat of the matter.

12. Exclusive | Cops Caused Bandra Slum Fire by Demolition: Survivors

A fireman at the scene of the Behrampada fire.(Photo: Pallavi Prasad/The Quint)

After a level four fire ravaged a huge area of Behrampada slum in Bandra, Mumbai, on Thursday, 26 October, nearly 400 slums were razed to ashes, leaving thousands homeless. Fortunately, there were no fatalities, which, if you’ve ever been to Behrampada, is a rather curious fact.

Behrampada is Mumbai’s ‘no-go’ zone, in stark contrast to Bandra West, its rich cousin. Poor, mostly Muslim slum-dwellers, who work in home-based garment factories and tanneries, have made it their home. Hundreds of one-room accommodations are stacked together next to Bandra’s railway line.

How then, did the fire, which spread over a 20,000 square metre area and lasted three hours, leave only three injured, especially when the people were caught unawares?

Here’s our report.

13. In Bengal Village, Muslims See B’deshi Hindu Migrants as a Threat

The years of inter-communal tolerance “are over”, says a local imam.(Photo: The Quint/ Chandan Nandy)

Over a week after Muslims torched a Hindu house in Baduria, West Bengal, sparking riotous mobs to resort to violence in Basirhat and other nearby and far-flung districts of West Bengal, the years of inter-communal tolerance “are over”, says a local maulana, adding that the bhratittyo (brotherhood) of the past has suffered a “permanent damage”.

Catch the full story here.

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