Amidst the ongoing ‘farmer’ protests against the farm reforms that have been hijacked by pro-Khalistani, far-left and various political parties to further their agenda against the Modi government, several social media users sympathetic to the alleged farmers are now resorting to spreading fake news, images on the internet to garner support to the protests which have already caused massive inconvenience to the public.
On Thursday, members of the Congress party, a few farmer organisations and alleged actors took to social media to share an image of a deceased elder person. According to their claim, the elderly farmer was one of the protestors camping along the Haryana-Delhi border and he passed away during the protests against the Modi government.
Aabid Mir Magami, who is the spokesperson of Jammu and Kashmir’s Youth Congress tweeted the image to claim that another farmer has been ‘martyred’ in the current protests. Essentially, sharing the image of a deceased old man, Magami insinuated that the so-called deceased farmer had passed away during the ongoing farmer protest against the Modi government.
All India Kisan Sanghrash, which claims to be a Twitter account representing ‘farmers’, also resorted to peddle fake news on social media. Taking to Twitter, AIKS shared the same image and claimed that the ‘farmer’ has sacrificed his life during the Delhi Kisan Morcha.
Interestingly, the account also tagged handles of self-proclaimed journalists Vinod Kapri and Prashant Kanojia, Islamist Sayema and actor Sonu Sood in the post. The likes of Kaprii, Kanojia and Sayema are notoriously known for spreading fake news and inciting people on social media platforms.
Actor Sushant Singh, as usual, too fell for the fake images. Sharing a post of another social media user, who had himself falsely claimed that it was painful for him to share the news of a farmer passing away during the protests against the three farm laws.
Tweeting that post, the alleged actor Singh attacked Prime Minister Modi saying it was ‘unbearable’.
However, the image shared by assorted trolls associated with the alleged ‘farmer protests’, the farmer’s associations and actors have nothing to do with the ongoing protests against the Modi government.
Fact-Check:
The image of the elderly deceased man which is being aggressively shared on social media platforms claiming that he was one of the protestors at the ‘Delhi chalo’ rally of the alleged farmers, who passed away during the protests is a blatant lie.
Twitter user Befittingfacts had called out the lies spread by the trolls and political handles.
https://twitter.com/BefittingFacts/status/1342340034054082561?ref_src=twsrc%5EtfwThe image was first shared on Facebook page ‘Gareeb jatt’ in September 2018. According to his Facebook post, the old man who was around 70 years old, was found dead at Bohdi crossroad and his details are not available. He had urged the fellow social media users to share the post so that the family of the deceased can know about his death.
Here is the image of the Facebook post that was posted two years back on September 2, 2018, by the account named ‘Gareeb Jatt’.
From the above, it can be said that the images being shared on social media to claim a farmer has ‘died for the protests’ to generate a sympathy wave for the dubious protests is nothing but a fake image being spread for propaganda.
As soon as social media users started sharing the old Facebook post to ‘fact-check’ the fake news peddlers, actor Sushant Singh acknowledged his mistake and said that he needs to apologise to the PM too.