After journalist Arnab Goswami was confronted by stand-up comic Kunal Kamra in a flight, the co-founder of Postcard News, a news portal – which has repeatedly peddled fake news – was also confronted by a group of women at Mangaluru airport on Friday, 31 January. The website’s founder, Vikram Hegde, was asked to sing “Vande Mataram along with them.
"Will you please sing Vande Matram, its for the country. Please sing for us, we'll join you. Let's sing Vande Matram, please Vikram. Its your time now," the women are heard saying in the video which was posted on social media.
While Hegde chose not to respond to the women, one person in the background said that, “he is silent like Arnab Goswami.”
After multiple pleas for singing the song, a woman asked him, "do you remember the time Godse killed Gandhi?"
“You have been torturing us on Facebook all this while, now sing. Sing Vande Matram,” the woman is heard saying.
Hegde, who is a well known social media personality, has been charged with spreading fake news on several occasions.
In April 2019, he was arrested for spreading fake news in Karnataka when his website put up a fake letter claiming it was written by MB Patil to UPA Chairperson Sonia Gandhi detailing how he was planning to divide the Lingayat Community in Karnataka by granting them the status of a separate religion.
Earlier, in March 2018, Hegde was also arrested for allegedly spreading false information about a Jain monk who had been injured in an accident. He was charged with promoting enmity between different groups, deliberately insulting religious beliefs, and criminal conspiracy, under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code.
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