On August 1, a video surfaced from an Indigo flight between Kolkata and Mumbai. It showed a man being slapped mid-flight by another passenger, followed by cries and concern among fellow passengers.
The victim was later identified as Hossain Ahmed Mazumdar from Assam’s Cachar district. He reportedly had a panic attack just before takeoff, which delayed the flight. Another passenger, Hafijul Rahman, apparently agitated by the delay, slapped Hossain in full view of others.
The assaulter was immediately deboarded at Kolkata and arrested by the Central Industrial Security Force (CISF). Indigo Airlines promptly released a statement condemning the behaviour and confirming action had been taken.
The Manufactured Outrage
What should have been a straightforward disciplinary issue on a flight quickly spiraled into a communal controversy. Prominent leftist and Islamist social media handles began circulating the video, minus context. Tweets were carefully crafted to suggest the attacker was Hindu and the victim Muslim, without ever stating names. The intention? Obvious — to inflame the communal angle and portray Muslims as perpetual victims.
But the façade collapsed when Jagriti Chandra, a journalist from The Hindu, fact-checked the names. She confirmed that both the accused and the victim were Muslims, citing Indigo’s own internal reports.
By then, the damage was done. The false narrative had already gone viral.
This is not an isolated case. Similar incidents have been routinely twisted to paint Hindus as aggressors, even when facts say otherwise.
In all these cases, initial disinformation spread rapidly, and corrections, if any, came too late and too quietly.
🧠 How They Do It
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Omit Names: Carefully hide the identity of the accused in early posts.
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Amplify Identity of Victim: Use selective language to highlight minority status.
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Imply Motive: Insert religious angle with words like “communal” or “hate crime”, even when there’s no evidence.
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Shift Quickly: Once the truth is out, these handles delete, ignore, or move on, never apologize.
This is a deliberate strategy, exploiting the emotional weight of communalism and the reach of social media to paint Hindus as systemic oppressors.
Why It Matters
This isn’t just Twitter drama, it’s narrative engineering. In a country where communal harmony is critical, weaponizing misinformation can spark real-world violence. Worse, it erodes trust in actual victims who do face discrimination.
And while platforms like X (formerly Twitter) claim to combat misinformation, these repeated, targeted lies often go unpunished. The blue ticks pushing these lies walk free, consequence-less, their timelines intact, their agendas pushed a little further each time.
Final Thoughts
What happened on the Indigo flight was unfortunate. But what followed on social media was dangerous.
India needs stricter accountability, not just for onboard unruly passengers, but for those who habitually stoke communal fire through falsehoods.
And the public must learn: not every viral video tells the whole story. Some are edited not with scissors, but with intent.
