It's a mad, mad, mad world... So are the media

Protest "faked" for TV

They should have been on stage, pulling rabbits out of their hats. An enterprising band of political activists created magic of sorts during a televised protest that showed a cyber café where none existed.

Many watched the Republican Party of India troopers descend on the outlet — shown to be located somewhere in Thane — rip apart cables and smash computers.

he café was punished for a cardinal sin: allowing a porn site that featured lewd photos of a woman posing next to a Buddha bust. The depiction was illegal anyway — cafes can’t permit such sites to be opened — but the self-appointed obscenity busters were taking no chances. They also wanted to be “seen” going about their business.

That the “reality show” was fake came through when police, looking for the café, discovered that the activists put up the “Sigma Cyber Café” banner outside a vacant shop. Computers shown during the “smashing act” turned out to be empty CPU boxes and faulty monitors.

Asked about the stunt, RPI’s district chief Sunil Kambe said that theirs was a “symbolic” protest. “We did not know whether a cyber cafe existed or not,” he said.

From The Telegraph, 13 August 2007