Arun Yadav, the former incharge of the Bharatiya Janata Party's (BJP) IT cell in Haryana, was removed from his post on Thursday, 7 July, after Twitter users inundated the website, calling for his arrest over an offensive tweet on the Prophet.
#ArrestArunYadav was among the top trends on Twitter on Thursday.
The online appeals, and his sacking came in the backdrop of Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair's arrest for 'hurting religious sentiments' over a 2018 tweet.
Consequently, a statement issued by state BJP president OP Dhankar said Yadav is being removed from the post with immediate effect but did not give any reason for it.
This is not the first time Yadav's social media presence has prompted the ire of Twitter users, and fact-checkers have previously flagged his Twitter for peddling fallacious information.
Here is what we know about him:
6 Lakh Followers & a History of Misleading Posts
The BJP member joined Twitter in the August of 2015, and has six lakh followers. His bio reads, "Proud BJP Worker. Bhartiya Views & Videos Personal."
With over 28,600 tweets, Yadav's tweets consist of sharing party decisions and government policies.
However, Yadav has also been known for disseminating misleading, and potentially incediary posts, such as:
In February 2022, a video of Bollywood actor Shah Rukh Khan blowing air into the wind after offering a 'dua' (prayer) had gone viral with a claim that the actor spat on veteran singer Lata Mangeshkar's mortal remains while attending her funeral. Among those sharing the false and misleading claims was Yadav.
In November 2021, a 10-second clipped, viral video of Congress leader Rashid Alvi was shared by several social media users, including Yadav, in which Alvi could be heard saying that those who chant 'Jai Shri Ram' slogans are not seers, but demons.
In January 2022, Yadav shared an image of Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, claiming that he was the "first person to eat food with a mask on," however, the image was captured from a video, which clearly showed Gandhi taking off his mask before eating.
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