In India, it's the season of the fake sting.
The report was sensational: A math teacher in New Delhi turned her classroom into a brothel, forcing high-school students into prostitution.
A TV reporter set up a sting to expose her, posing as a customer and secretly taping a conversation with the teacher. A young woman who said she was one of the teacher's students described her ordeal on camera.
After the report aired, a mob attacked the school, dragged the teacher outside and beat her. Protesters set a car on fire and stoned passing traffic. Police arrested the teacher "solely on the basis of the sting operation," Delhi Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat told the Hindustan Times.
But there was one catch: Police now believe it was all made up.
Rashmi Singh, the young woman posing as a student-turned-prostitute, was neither of those things, police said, but appears to have been an ambitious reporter looking to make her mark.
The reporter posing as a customer, Prakash Singh, was allegedly working with someone whom the teacher owed money to, authorities said.
And the teacher, Uma Khurana, who was fired from her job and spent 10 days in jail, was "more of a victim than an offender," judge Alok Agrawal said when he ordered her released on bail on Monday.
She was not the only victim: On Monday, three men were arrested for posing as journalists in an attempt to blackmail a member of parliament.
The three men tried to bribe parliamentarian Rameshwar Oraon -- then announced they were conducting a TV news sting. They told him they would quash the report if he paid them.
Oraon did not fall for it, and the three were charged with impersonation and extortion.
In the school-prostitution sting, Prakash Singh and Rashmi Singh have been arrested on criminal conspiracy charges, along with the man to whom the teacher owed money.
That fake sting operation -- dubbed "Stink Operation" by local newspapers -- was a glaring example of the dishonesty some say is rife in India's hyper-competitive media world.
Less than a generation ago, newspaper reporters had only one another to elbow aside, and India had just one TV channel, the state-run Doordarshan.
Today, there are more than 100, 24-hour news channels.
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
‘WATER WARFARE’: A Pakistani official called India’s suspension of a 65-year-old treaty on the sharing of waters from the Indus River ‘a cowardly, illegal move’ Pakistan yesterday canceled visas for Indian nationals, closed its airspace for all Indian-owned or operated airlines, and suspended all trade with India, including to and from any third country. The retaliatory measures follow India’s decision to suspend visas for Pakistani nationals in the aftermath of a deadly attack by shooters in Kashmir that killed 26 people, mostly tourists. The rare attack on civilians shocked and outraged India and prompted calls for action against their country’s archenemy, Pakistan. New Delhi did not publicly produce evidence connecting the attack to its neighbor, but said it had “cross-border” links to Pakistan. Pakistan denied any connection to
TRUMP EFFECT: The win capped one of the most dramatic turnarounds in Canadian political history after the Conservatives had led the Liberals by more than 20 points Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney yesterday pledged to win US President Donald Trump’s trade war after winning Canada’s election and leading his Liberal Party to another term in power. Following a campaign dominated by Trump’s tariffs and annexation threats, Carney promised to chart “a new path forward” in a world “fundamentally changed” by a US that is newly hostile to free trade. “We are over the shock of the American betrayal, but we should never forget the lessons,” said Carney, who led the central banks of Canada and the UK before entering politics earlier this year. “We will win this trade war and
Armed with 4,000 eggs and a truckload of sugar and cream, French pastry chefs on Wednesday completed a 121.8m-long strawberry cake that they have claimed is the world’s longest ever made. Youssef El Gatou brought together 20 chefs to make the 1.2 tonne masterpiece that took a week to complete and was set out on tables in an ice rink in the Paris suburb town of Argenteuil for residents to inspect. The effort overtook a 100.48m-long strawberry cake made in the Italian town of San Mauro Torinese in 2019. El Gatou’s cake also used 350kg of strawberries, 150kg of sugar and 415kg of
RSS