Iqbal, A Differently-Abled, Recalls Another Incident Of Media Shame

SRINAGAR: While Kashmir remains shocked by the alleged misdemeanor committed by a certain news portal and its owner, Mohammad Iqbal, a physically challenged person recalls his own brush with another such media-portal that did a crowd-funding in his name but never passed a penny, from the collected amount, towards him.

On March 2, 2021, Ubaid Malik, a journalist from QNS 24/7 media portal based in Srinagar, approached Mohammad Iqbal on the pretext of helping him out with setting up a business. Mohammad Iqbal is a differently-abled person from Kulgam district’s Dumhal Hanjipora area suffering from a rare autistic syndrome. Since he remains abandoned by his family, he lives in Srinagar’s Nowpora area in a hostel for the physically challenged. To bear the living costs, he sells paltry items like keychains, masks, pens, and other stuff on his tricycle around the city. Though in his condition, anyone would have resorted to begging, he regards the practice as a disgrace to humanity. Surprising as it sounds, and as little as he earns, he has gone on an Umrah to Mecca and Medina with his own hard-earned money in 2018. He prays five times a day and desires to live an honorable life.

Pertinently, when the said journalist approached Mohammad Iqbal, he was already dreaming of setting up a shop somewhere and take his small business to next level, where he doesn’t have to tire around the city for meager earnings of Rs. 500 – 600.

“They claimed that they would help me in setting up the shop. When they shot the video, they did not mention that it was for crowd-funding. They said that it was for their superiors to ascertain whether my case was genuine,” Mohammad Iqbal remembers.

At this point, Mohammad Iqbal was not aware that all of it is a bogus front. Later on, when he found his video on the internet, he was utterly surprised. From the comment section, he could tell that people were showing their love in terms of monetary help, but the account details that were provided were not his. There were repeated requests from various viewers of the video to QNS 24/7 to provide the personal details of Mohammad Iqbal, but the people who shot his video had not even asked him for his account details in the first place.

“They came and shot a very emotional video on Mohammad Iqbal’s life. Later on, they published that video on their YouTube channel. Surprisingly, they had provided the account number of some third party that belonged to an NGO called Mausada Foundation. Mohammad Iqbal’s personal account details were not furnished. They did not even give their phone numbers to him. This implies that they had already come with nefarious intentions,” Abdul Rashid Bhat, Iqbal’s close friend and president J-and-K Handicapped Association, added while speaking with Kashmir Despatch.

Though it could not be ascertained, however, according to Bhat, the Mausada Foundation is a mere front created by the said news-portal to perpetrate such cases of fraud and deceit. It can also be the case that the NGO is used by the involved news-portal to avoid legal proceedings or litigations.

Subsequently, Mohammad Iqbal’s friends and aides wanted him to press charges against the involved individuals, the media portal, and the NGO whose account details the QNS 24/7 media portal had provided, but since he considered it futile, he left the perpetrators to “God’s Justice”.

“Even since they wronged me, I have never seen or tried to contact those people again. But their action has harmed me. People often flaunt lies about me and say that I have received ten-lakh rupees in donations from QNS 24/7 and that I am unnecessarily playing poor. This is extremely hurtful considering the fact that I have always implied on living honorably and I have never received any help from the said media-portal,” Mohammad Iqbal said with a sigh.

When Kashmir Despatch reached Editor-in-Chief QNS 24/7, Mohammad Altaf Meer, to ascertain whether the allegations leveled against the media portal were true, the said person feigned ignorance at first and said, “before commenting, he’d have to get the details into the matter from his staff”.

When the Editor-in-Chief of QNS 24/7 was contacted again, he confirmed that an amount of Rs. 2700 was received in donations from the general public over Mohammad Iqbal’s story. Pertinently, according to the bank statement obtained by Kashmir Despatch, for only a period of six days following the publishing of Mohammad Iqbal’s story on QNS 24/7 MediaPortal’s social media handles, an amount of Rs. 3700 was found to have been deposited into the bank account of the involved Mausada Foundation.

Since, cases of deceit, fraud, and swindling perpetrated by unrecognized media portals are rampantly appearing in news, it remains to be seen whether the government or the media bodies would come up with some filtering and prevention mechanism. Until then, Mohammad Iqbal’s story would be repeated with countless people in Kashmir.

(Kashmir Despatch)