NLU Jodhpur law student Pranita Mehta had died on Sunday while on holiday in Gokarna but her former co-students and alumni are up in arms about the sensationalist misreporting of her death by media.

“It was absolutely false, she was sitting on the beach when the tide came and she was trying to fight for her life for 45 minutes,” said an NLU Jodhpur alumnus.

The student campaign’s purpose was to make sure that “her memory is not maligned by these media houses”, she said.

Out of the below websites, which were shared by email and listed in a post on popular content sharing website Reddit by an anonymous NLU Jodhpur student, only Scoopwhoop has removed its original article headlined “Law student dies after falling 300 feet while trying to take a perfect selfie in Karnataka”.

The post stated that the true version of events was that she and her friends:

were at Kumta beach, and were sitting on some rocks which were about 10-15 feet above sea, when due to unexpected high tide, 3 of the youngsters, including the deceased, were flown away by a giant wave. Two of them were brought back to the shore by another wave, but the deceased, whose glasses had come off, continued to struggle as she held on to a rock for support she bravely struggled and tried to swim for 45 mins. Unfortunately, she lost her grip, and was carried towards the deeper end of the sea by the waves.

They also annexed an FIR report to the post as evidence of the misreporting.

However, the news item has now gone truly global, with the UK tabloid, the Daily Mirror for instance reporting “‘Perfect selfie kills student’ who plunges 300ft from lighthouse while trying to take photo of herself”, citing “local media reports

The other videos and many other articles are still online, with even The Hindu soberly still (mis)reporting:

Pranita Sunil Mehta (21) of Jodhpur in Rajasthan died while taking a selfie near the Lighthouse at Gokarn in Kumta taluk on Sunday, according to reports reaching here on Monday. She slipped into the sea from a boulder while taking the selfie.

The below post on Reddit has attracted 585 upvotes at the time of publication, making it by far one of the most popular recent posts in the so-called sub-reddit r/India.

In early 2014, Nalsar Hyderabad students were successful in their protests against media’s misreporting, winning a Rs 1 lakh fine against a local TV channel that flawed, one-sided and misleading story” on them when they filmed them outside a local pub in April.

Update: Follow up story on the students’ successful campaign

It is understood that the content of the post was based on an email letter that has been circulated to media houses, etc:

http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/videos/news/Perfect-selfie-kills-Jodhpur-law-student-at-Gokarna-beach/videoshow/52536085.cms

http://www.newsx.com/national/30570-perfect-selfie-kills-law-student-at-gokarna-beach

http://www.scoopwhoop.com/Law-Student-Dies-After-Falling-300-Feet-While-Trying-To-Take-A-Perfect-Selfie-In-Karnataka/

http://videos.oneindia.com/watch/220133/perfectselfie-kills-jodhpur-law-student-at-gokarna-beach.html

http://www.thehindu.com/news/national/karnataka/girl-taking-selfie-falls-into-sea-dies/article8670571.ece

http://www.sahilonline.org/newsDetails.php?cid=1&nid=43440

These articles claim that she was in the midst of taking a “daredevil selfie” when the accident happened. Some even state that the youngsters were careless because they visited the beach despite there being numerous warnings against the same. Not only are these claims uncorroborated, but also they are false and present a version of events which did not take place at all, which only shows the sheer lack of responsibility and ethics displayed by the news channels and media houses concerned.

The articles claim she fell 300ft from the top of a lighthouse after she slipped while taking a selfie. When in reality she was never on a lighthouse, and the she never slipped from said lighthouse and she was not taking a selfie on said lighthouse. The newspaper even got the location wrong, it mentions a different beach.

Actual Events:

Pranita, who was a student of National Law University, Jodhpur, was visiting Gokarna with four of her friends. They were at Kumta beach, and were sitting on some rocks which were about 10-15 feet above sea, when due to unexpected high tide, 3 of the youngsters, including the deceased, were flown away by a giant wave. Two of them were brought back to the shore by another wave, but the deceased, whose glasses had come off, continued to struggle as she held on to a rock for support she bravely struggled and tried to swim for 45 mins. Unfortunately, she lost her grip, and was carried towards the deeper end of the sea by the waves. The friends promptly called the Police as well as the Management of the Hotel they were staying at, and proceeded to seek help from the local residents from a nearby village. However, they could not understand the youngsters’ plea for help, and by the time they did send some help, about forty minutes had already passed and the deceased was out of sight. She was brought back ashore on a boat by some of the local fishermen, and was pronounced dead by the authorities. Her body was taken for post-mortem and was handed over to her relatives afterwards.

She was an amazing person, extremely intelligent, she was the class topper and represented India and NLUJ at prestigious events such as Jessup, she was kind and warm hearted. Her batchmates, teachers, seniors and even our Alumni have been rallying on facebook and on twitter, spreading the story of what really happened and contacting government officials (Arun jately among others) to take some action against these newspapers but I doubt they will listen to a hundred students. Her family has been mourning the loss of their great daughter, the last thing they need is her being mocked and laughed at for dying while taking a selfie.

All we want is that her family is not harassed by untrue depictions of the event which belittle the huge amount of respect that she has earned through her hardwork.

I would request you to please check your facts before publishing such news articles.

This is also a reminder to all of you that everytime you read a story where the victim died in this way might actually just be a cooked up tale.

For Pranita.

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Edit: Guys please, if something here offends you then please let me know, but please do not downvote this, we dont want her to be remembered this way, we want to get the true story out.

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EDIT: for those who wanted proof COPY OF FIR CORROBORATING THE STORY http://imgur.com/a/s9djo