Was the picture of the two Adivasi boys in Peravur in Kannur district scrounging a waste dump for food, which has landed Prime Minister Narendra Modi in the vortex of a major controversy, a piece of mischievous journalism? The question has been raised by Chief Minister Oommen Chandy’s office which has put out a video footage that shows one of the two boys narrating the entire episode and stating that what they actually ate were bananas given by a women’s team that took the photograph.
“They first asked us to collect some covers and put them inside a gunny bag, which we did. Then some grown-up girls asked us to pick up some filth, which we did. They then brought some bananas and gave them to us and said that they wanted to take some photos. Then they took photographs,” the boy says in the video clip released by the Chief Minister’s Office here on Thursday.
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The boy’s mother says that she came to know about the incident from the picture that appeared in the newspaper and that some BJP workers had visited their home and enquired why the boys were not put up in hostels. She came to know the details of the incident only when she went to Peravur and enquired about it. “Even if there is nothing at home for a meal, we do not send our children to fetch things from others’ yard and sell them to buy rice. We also don't ask them to go to waste dumps. Nor do we consume food waste or go for collecting scrap. But, in newspapers, it has been reported that when our men go to work, we pick our children and go to waste dump to feed them. Just imagine? There are lots of other things that can be published in the newspapers other than this,” the woman says.