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Dana Majhi accuses Odisha TV channel of defaming ‘poor tribal’, files case
The farmer took offence when a local TV channel reported that a non-government organisation helping Majhi may have earned Rs 100 crore in donations from abroad using his name.
Allegations of getting Rs 100 crore in charities from Bahrain have prompted Dana Majhi, a poor Odisha tribal who shook the nation’s conscience in August 2016 after being forced to walk home with his dead wife’s corpse on his shoulder, to file a police complaint.
Television stations played on the loop images of a penniless Majhi, accompanied by one of his sobbing daughters, walking 10km from a Bhawanipatna hospital in Kalahandi district to his village with his dead wife wrapped in cloth as he was unable to pay for transport.
The video prompted many individuals and organisations to open their purse strings for the marginal farmer. His benefactors included Bahraini prime minister Prince Khalifa bin Salman Al Khalifa, who gave him Rs 9 lakh.
Majhi, who never had a bank account earlier, now has a sizeable fixed deposit that will mature in five years. The farmer took offence when a local TV channel, Naxatra News, reported this January that a non-government organisation helping Majhi may have earned Rs 100 crore in donations from abroad using his name.
Majhi lodged a case at Bhawanipatna police station on Sunday, alleging that the news channel and a social activist tried to defame him.
“In the news aired by the channel, the activist alleged that I got Rs 100 crore after I carried the body of my wife. The news is false and motivated. The news would also endanger my life,” he alleged.
Read | Wife, house, bike: Life moves on for Dana Majhi who trekked 10 km with his wife’s body
He said he came to know about the report a few days ago and accused the activist and the TV channel of “denigrating poor tribals like me through their accusations”.
According to the Naxatra News report, an education baron who runs a large tribal school made around Rs 100 crore from foreign donors using Majhi’s name.
Naxtra News chairman Prabhat Mallick denied Majhi’s allegation that he was defamed.
“We had based our story on a high court case filed by an activist. We have shown how some vested interests are exploiting Majhi’s name. If Majhi minutely watches the report, he can understand that we have not maligned him. He has been instigated to lodge the case,” he said.
Police have yet to register an FIR based on Majhi’s complaint. According to Bhawanipatna police station inspector Ramesh Bisoi, he could be asked to approach a court to file a suit under the defamation law.
Majhi has remarried and the three daughters from his first wife study in a residential school in Bhubaneswar after an educational institute offered to provide them free education.
