In an article shared by at least 13 Union Ministers and several senior Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders in the past two days, a website called thetruepicture.in claims to have busted “four major fake news stories”.
The article, also tweeted by Minister of Information & Broadcasting Smriti Irani – just a day before she issued the controversial fake news directive, which was later withdrawn by Prime Minister Modi – claims two stories published by The Indian Express as fake. However, when the national daily did a background check on the founders of thetruepicture.in, some intriguing, and real, news came to the fore.
Here are some of the findings that The Indian Express reported on the website:
- The website was registered in 2017.
- It shares its landline number with BlueKraft Digital Foundation, which is the “technology and knowledge” partner to Exam Warriors (PM Modi’s book to help children cope with exam pressure.
- BlueKraft Digital Foundation was founded by Hitesh Jain and Rajesh Jain in 2016.
- Rajesh Jain, a technology entrepreneur, was involved in Narendra Modi’s 2014 campaign and worked at Unique Identification Authority of India.
- BlueKraft’s founding CEO Akhilesh Mishra was also a part of Modi’s campaign and worked as content director of MyGov.in.
Mishra, however, denied that BlueKart had any relation with The True Picture and claimed that the same landline number is a “mix up,” IE reported.
The Indian Express has also shared the documents to back their stories: “For riding a horse, upper caste men kill Dalit youth in Gujarat” and “Govt sends out note: Very sensitive time for ties with China, so skip Dalai Lama events,” which the website called fake.
The newspaper cited the FIR lodged by the father of the 21-year-old Dalit boy, who was allegedly killed by three men belonging to the Kshatriya community because he owned and rode a horse in Bhavnagar.
Pradeep Rathod ’s father, Kalu, in the FIR, said that whenever his son went out with his mare (ghodi), the accused in this case, would often use a derogatory word, ask him why he rode a horse and threatened to kill him?
In the second report about the government asking senior functionaries to skip a Dalai Lama event stating that it was a “very sensitive time” for Indo-China relations, The Indian Express quoted the letter written by the Cabinet Secretary to top bureaucrats asking them to avoid the event.
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