Rohit Sardana, popular news anchor at Aaj Tak, passed away earlier today. According to reports, he was infected with Covid-19 and suffered a cardiac arrest before the death.
While the tragic news brought condolences from most people on social media, some activists and social media users were celebrating the death, as Sardana was perceived to be from the right-wing by the left-liberals and Islamists. Several Islamists, including those with verified Twitter handles, were abusing the departed soul.
But such hatred for Rohit Sardana was not limited to social media, it was also seen on the Wikipedia page of the journalist. Sardana’s wiki page was updated at 7:10 AM today to reflect his death, and within minutes, Islamists had started to vandalise the page to abuse him.
Within just 35 minutes of the first edit after his death, someone added in the report, “He was also suffering from modism”, replacing the world Covid-19 with Modism. It was just the start of dozens of such edits, abusing the former journalist.
Edits were made in the Wikipedia page calling Sardana a ‘paltu patrakar’ and ‘chu*tiya’, saying that he had a bachelors degree in ‘dallagiri’ etc. People who made the edits without logging into the crowd-sourced encyclopaedia site added that he was a ‘chaddhi sanghi’, a ‘gaumutra drinking sannghi’, a ‘paid bhakt’ etc.
Some people were more blunt about their hatred for Rohit Sardana, who wrote that it was good that the person died, using abusive words for him.
Rohit Sardana’s short Wikipedia page was edited almost 500 times today, with the editors adding the terms ‘Dallal Journalist’, ‘Bootlicker of BJP’ etc.
While most people edited the body of the article, some also edited the infobox in the page, adding words like ‘dalla’ and ‘BJP ka dalla’ to his name. In one edit, www.pornhub.com was inserted in the website field, and his age was written as 786.
However, not every vandalism was negative and abusive for Sardana. Reacting to the abuses, pro-Sardana editors also resorted to vandalising the page, by inserting praises for him while removing the edits.
He was described as ‘one of the greatest media news anchor personality’ by one editor, while another described him as ‘Nationalist Journalist and Muslims ka baap’. Some editors added that he was known for ‘deflating Muslim propaganda and for teaching Pseudo liberals strict lessons’.
Not all vandalism were negative or positive for Rohit Sardana. Some of the edits can be considered as vandalism because they added useless information that does not meet Wikipedia standard. In such edits, one person added ‘My uncle was his distant cousin’, while another added, ‘my cousin was nephew of his wife’.
Along with from such vandalism, the Wikipedia page also saw a large number of edits following the death of Rohit Sardana. Apart from updating the page with the information related to his death, there were several conflicting edits on the cause of the death. While some editors said he died of a Heart Attack while suffering from Covid-19, some others changed that to say that he died due to Covid-19. As a result, a tag saying the article is being heavily edited has been inserted on the page.