Last month we had reported how Abhishek Mishra, one self-styled YouTuber who has been caught spreading fake news and images and is often spotted rubbing shoulders with various politicians including Aam Aadmi Party chief Arvind Kejriwal and senior Congress leader Digvijaya Singh.
Today, a Twitter user by the name Dr Laliya, pointed out how the same website we had exposed ‘viralinindia.net’ was spreading fake news regarding a BJP leader in Rajasthan.
https://twitter.com/Lala_The_Don/status/1036459372690386946?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw
A June 2018 post on viralinIndia.net mentions how a BJP leader in Badmer was caught in a compromising position inside a temple.
The article says that the said incident took place in one ‘Veermata’ temple in Badmer, which is a little far from the city. To take ‘advantage’ of the seclusion, a BJP leader and one ABVP student leader were ‘caught on the CCTV camera’ when they got intimate, the article says. Following this, the security called up police which took the duo in for questioning. The article quotes one police constable ‘Kalyan Singh’ who had said the said BJP leader tried to pull strings because of his political connections and sometimes referred to the girl as either his wife or his sister. The article explicitly says that the two were involved in an ‘illicit relationship’.
The article does not mention any source for their assertions.
Another website, ‘News FYI’, a Hindi news website also wrote the same news.
Amusingly, the website also uses the same stock image used by viralinindia.net to represent sexual intercourse. Save for some minor changes in the sentence formation, both the stories appear identical. Neither of the stories names the BJP leader.
However, the truth is far from what is written in the above two portals. In reality, the screengrab which is peddled as a BJP leader getting physical with an ABVP student leader in a secluded temple is actually of a jail superintendent of Kishanganj jail who was caught sexually molesting a minor girl in the jail premises in 2016.
Moreover, the incident is not from Rajasthan, but from Bihar and chief minister, Nitish Kumar had even asked for probe on the incident.
With Rajasthan state assembly elections expected to take place in few months’ time, more and more such fake news is expected from propagandists. And despite being called out repeatedly, no action is taken against Abhishek Mishra who is a habitual fake news peddler.