My post Why this deafening silence? on October 29, 2013 was about a domestic help in a posh locality in Delhi having been subjected to extreme torture by her employer, a woman working as a senior executive in a multinational company. Since then, I’ve been regularly checking newspapers and the internet for updates on this case. The last report I found was on November 08, 2013. After that, nothing! Is the victim is recovering from her physical injuries and psychological trauma? How has the victim and her family been coping with the situation? What has happened in the criminal case against the employer? Has anything been done, or is anything being done to prevent such incidents in future? We know nothing.
This applies to almost all sensational cases that are featured in the media. They appear with a big bang as BREAKING NEWS, receive a lot of coverage for a few days, and then get disappear when the next BREAKING NEWS appears with a big bang.
Unfortunately, this is exactly what will happen with the latest BREAKING NEWS: the death of Aruna Shanbaug. Sadly, this applies not just to the print and electronic media, but to all of us as well. We will all speak and write strong words about Aruna Shanbaug …. until the next BREAKING NEWS. Then, we will all start speaking and writing strong words about that …. until the next BREAKING NEWS.
Do the media make us jump from one BREAKING NEWS to the next, or do the media jump from one BREAKING NEWS to the next because that’s what we want?
Are we interested only in expressing opinions about the ISSUE OF THE DAY? Do we, individually and collectively, at all try to do something to resolve any issue?
Proactive Indian 
Yup, that’s how it is. Only sensationalism for a day and then back to chasing the next breaking news. That’s why sometimes I think it is better to not express opinions about any such thing because they hardly mean anything, other than making us feel good about ourselves (at least for a few minutes) and fool the others in believing that we actually care. Just praying in silence for the departed soul of Aruna.
very rarely there is a follow up in such cases..
It’s a very good point. Maybe we should make a new kind of news service called ‘old news’? It could be a service dedicated to finding out what DID happen to those who made it into the headlines and then disappeared without a trace?