The Indo-Asian News Service (IANS) had wrongly reported an incident of a couple of being kidnapped this morning. Initially, they had reported that BJP MLA Rajesh Mishra’s daughter Sakshi Mishra and her husband were kidnapped in a black SUV at gunpoint outside the Allahabad High Court.
However, it later came to be known that it was another couple that had been kidnapped. The police have nabbed the abductors and rescued the couple. As for Sakshi and her husband, Ajitesh, both were spotted attending the court hearing. Their lawyer had claimed that Ajitesh was roughed up outside the court premises. The couple weren’t kidnapped.
Due to the confusion caused by IANS, several news portals such as India Today, The Tribune and Congress mouthpiece National Herald have also reported the same.
IANS had later corrected their report after it became clear that two were separate incidents.
Last year IANS had used expletives to describe PM Modi. In a story about a new scheme approved by the Cabinet of Ministers chaired by the Prime Minister himself in which the word ‘Bakhch*d’ was used as Narendra Modi’s middle name. The journalist was later suspended.
Earlier OpIndia had reported on how the alleged reply to an RTI filed by IANS, on money spent on PMMVY in Uttar Pradesh, greatly differed from the official government data.
In May this year, in a gross violation of Election Commission rules, IANS published a comprehensive Exit Poll for the 2019 Lok Sabha elections. The Exit Poll was published before the final phase of the election had even begun. Since 1998 Exit Polls have been banned by the Election Commission from the time the poll begins till half-an-hour after the polling ends.