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.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
Eleven people, including a former minister, were arrested in Serbia on Friday over a train station disaster in which 16 people died. The concrete canopy of the newly renovated station in the northern city of Novi Sad collapsed on Nov. 1, 2024 in a disaster widely blamed on corruption and poor oversight. It sparked a wave of student-led protests and led to the resignation of then-Serbian prime minister Milos Vucevic and the fall of his government. The public prosecutor’s office in Novi Sad opened an investigation into the accident and deaths. In February, the public prosecutor’s office for organized crime opened another probe into
RISING RACISM: A Japanese group called on China to assure safety in the country, while the Chinese embassy in Tokyo urged action against a ‘surge in xenophobia’ A Japanese woman living in China was attacked and injured by a man in a subway station in Suzhou, China, Japanese media said, hours after two Chinese men were seriously injured in violence in Tokyo. The attacks on Thursday raised concern about xenophobic sentiment in China and Japan that have been blamed for assaults in both countries. It was the third attack involving Japanese living in China since last year. In the two previous cases in China, Chinese authorities have insisted they were isolated incidents. Japanese broadcaster NHK did not identify the woman injured in Suzhou by name, but, citing the Japanese
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS