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Death of Roy Matthew featuring in ‘Sahayak system’ exposé raises urgent questions

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DailyBiteMar 04, 2017 | 09:51

Death of Roy Matthew featuring in ‘Sahayak system’ exposé raises urgent questions

Roy Matthew, the 33-year-old Indian Army soldier from Kollam, Kerala, who had appeared in the viral “Sahayak System” exposé video and story (since taken down), has been found dead in a room in the abandoned barracks at Deolali Cantonment on March 3. His body was decomposed and he was found hanging, and preliminary enquiry says that he must have died at least three days ago.

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The Army has issued a press statement in which it has squarely blamed the “media personnel” involved the sting operation for Matthew’s death, which it has deemed a case of suicide.

According to the Army statement:

“Preliminary investigations have now revealed that the suicide may be result of a series of events which were triggered by media personnel managing to video-graph the deceased by asking leading questions on his duties as a buddy without his knowledge. It is very likely that the guilt factor [emphasis added] of letting down his superiors or conveying false impression to an unknown individual led [him] to take the extreme step.”

The statement not only appears to be hasty and making too many conclusions that are custom-made to bury the huge embarrassment that was the sahayak system exposé, it also blames the media for the sting operation.

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Lance Naik Roy Matthew said low ranking soldiers were used as “buddies” by senior officers as a part of Army culture and this was a prevalent practice. [Photo: DailyO]

The extremely mysterious nature of Matthew’s very tragic and very sudden death, barely weeks after the February sting operation, therefore raises a number of questions.

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1) What Roy Matthew alleged

Lance Naik Roy Matthew said low ranking soldiers were used as “buddies” by senior officers as a part of Army culture and this was a prevalent practice. The British era sahayak system has colonial roots when the British officer had an Indian buddy from the armed forces, who would double up as a domestic help.

Matthew said that chores such as walking the senior officers’ dogs, taking their children to school and back, or helping the officer wives carry shopping bags, were expected of the buddy, and no remuneration was offered in return.

There are major caste, class and other implications in the buddy system, which is, even in theory, a highly exploitative spractice with rampant possibilities of abuse and humiliation.

However, the current Army chief, Bipin Rawat has staunchly defended this outdated practice, saying it is meant to foster good relations among officers and cadres. General Rawat even said the soldiers shouldn’t approach media or social media to air their grievances but should voice their concerns directly to him via the rederessal mechanism which he has put in place.

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2) Matthew claimed he was harassed, family suspects foul play

According to this Hindustan Times report, the Army jawan who was serving in Nashik, Maharashtra, had accused his senior officers of harassment, according to his family members. The report says that Matthew’s family members suspect “foul play” and have demanded a probe into the circumstances leading to his death.

In fact, in the embedded video in the above tweet, Matthew’s bereaved wife, Fini Matthew, appears to be in clear shock and is heard repeatedly saying that she wants to know what happened to him.

3) Matthew went missing

Lance Naik Roy Matthew went missing (“absent without leave”, in Army parlance) on February 25, the day after the sahayak system sting was published online, February 24. His wife Fini told HT that Roy couldn’t be reached during the last three days and even the call wouldn’t go through.

It is evident that Roy Matthew was missing for almost a week until his decomposed body was found hanging from a ceiling fan in an abandoned barrack in the Deolali cantonment. What transpired during this week, whether Roy was threatened by those he ended up exposing, or if faced any physical and psychological injury during this time, must be thoroughly probed before arriving at a conveniently foregone conclusion.

4) Identity blown?

According to HT, Roy Matthew had called his wife to say that he had made a “big mistake” by giving an interview to a local Marathi-language television channel in which he accused his senior officers of mistreating him and others at the Nashik camp.

It is obvious that a lid on his identity, a primary requirement in the case of whistleblowing, wasn’t kept and this could have added to his stress. Given that he had said that several officers questioned him after the video went viral, it is likely that he felt cornered. 

But did he come in the way of harm?  Pegging the whole thing solely on media personnel without pressing for an investigation might be both bad journalism and bad police work.

5) Irresponsible media

Despite the big issues at stake, why was precaution not taken to ensure Roy Matthew isn't "stung" and compromised in the expose? Now that the news portal has taken the story down, since it hasn't stood by its own story, what explains the hurry to publish it without editing out the bits that could bring Matthew in harm's way? This craze to gets the hits or the TRPs, to be the first but not the best, is an extremely worrying sign in the contemporary news culture.  

6) Roy Matthew, Tej Bahadur Yadav and disgruntled Indian soldiers

Before Roy Matthew, BSF jawan Tej Bahadur Yadav released a phone camera-recorded “selfie” video on January 27 this year on the substandard, worse-than-jail food served to jawans in at his outpost in Siachen. It was only after Tej Bahadur’s video went viral that Roy Matthew, along with a few others, were secretly filmed exposing the sahayak system.

Ironically enough, the day on which Roy Matthew’s body has been discovered, a second video from Tej Bahadur Yadav has come out, in which he’s heard saying that he is being “mentally tortured”. He has also alleged that the possibility of entering Pakistani contacts into his phone in order to malign him and render his grave allegations baseless is quite strong.

In the light of the emerging crisis and the deepening of the moral muck, corruption and other firms of discrimination within the Army, we need a court-monitored probe, and not just an internal Army inquiry, into Lanke Naik Roy Matthew’s death.

It is extremely disappointing to see the soldier used as a trope by the nationalists to deflect every argument, while our jawans die ignoble and completely avoidable deaths, possibly unnatural ones, in order to serve the nation.

Last updated: March 04, 2017 | 10:01
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