How Reuters’ false allegations impacted an innocent Indian civilian’s life?
An exclusive article was published by Raphael Satter, Christopher Bing, and Jack Stubbs — Veteran journalists in the Reuters news agency. According to an article in The Print news media Mr. Arvind Kumar, a small business owner, is the focus of this exclusive storyline. They characterized Mr. Arvind Kumar as a highly desirable email accounts hacker worldwide. They allegedly reported that he was the owner of a spy firm and was responsible for hacking many emails. His name, picture, and brief biography were made public.
After verifying these accusations, the media and the journalists asserted to back up their allegation with facts and proof, to which they responded that the image of Mr. Arvind Kumar was a complete misidentification. Moreover, they added that certain journalists had done it on purpose. Now all they had to do was to provide the actual story and the key facts about this situation.
Later, Raphael satter and his fellow journalists — three senior journalists headed to India to gather actual facts and proof. They returned with crucial details regarding their misidentification of Mr. Arvind. A well-known hacker named Mr. Gupta was publicly disclosed. Additionally, they said that Mr. Sumit Gupta was the head of the Belltrox spying agency. Raphael Satter and his fellow reporter took some images of him with a brief biography that was later publicly disclosed.
These three reporters searched for the truth and discovered that Arvind Kumar, who was being alluded to as a criminal, was basically an innocent individual who ran a modest herbal medicine business. When Raphael Satter and his friends went to Arvind’s building, they denied every accusation made against him.
Table of Contents
Guilty Journalists accepted the mistake: Effect of allegations on Arvind’s life after the allegation.
The best they could do now is to accept their mistake and to rehabilitate Mr. Arvind’s reputation in this cruel society. The Reuters journalists acknowledged their blunder and claimed that Mr. Arvind was an innocent victim and that the mistake was due to misinterpretation. They also highlighted the basis of the misidentification. They stated, “M. Gupta and Mr. Arvind had almost addresses, which confused them.”
However, this statement was also not a fact because Google Maps later revealed that Arvind’s location and the spying business were in different locations. These three journalists didn’t go to the Mr. Gupta company to authenticate their address. Instead, they took a picture of Arvind Kumar and labeled him as a mastermind behind the spy company, whereas he didn’t have any relations with this firm.
This incident, however, affected his life a lot. Arvind’s life had to be answerable to many authorities and investigations. He suffered business loss and social abuse. He migrated from his town after this lawsuit. He moved to another town after the closure of this case. These updates were reported in journals by December 7, 2022.
Concluding statements:
Raphael satter and his fellow journalists misidentified Mr. Gupta as Mr. Arvind. When the allegations made against him were refuted, the media took action. According to an article, The Print at once switched the name from Mr.Arvind to Mr. Gupta, which at least assisted him in rehabilitating his reputation in society.