As nationwide protests engulf the entire country amid rising unrest against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act, multiple fake claims regarding the issue have surfaced on the internet over the past month.
CLAIM
In one such incident, a video showing a man bashing Prime Minister Narendra Modi and Home Minister Amit Shah for introducing the contentious Act is doing the rounds on social media. The video is being shared with a claim that this man is a BJP/RSS functionary.
In the video, he can be heard saying, “Who in this country has the guts to speak against Amit Shah? Give me the name of one journalist from television or print media who dared to question the government regarding the lathi charge on students at Jamia, AMU and then at JNU? Understand the fact that right now they are entering colleges and attacking students, if someone dares to speak against Narendra Modi, then we’ll enter your homes. We will beat you up and if required will even kill you.”
He further goes on to say that the Army and the Police to the BJP. “Let me tell you, the Police is ours, the Army is ours and with the Sangh on our side we will burn people alive if they speak against us. Then will label their family members as rioters and put them behind bars,” he can be heard saying in the video.
“A handful of people came out to protests against the CAA. What did they achieve? In fact, their houses were auctioned. Now their images will be displayed on streets and they will be lodged inside jails. Even the bail amount was increased from Rs 50,000 to Rs 2 Lakh,” he mentions towards the end.
An archived version of the tweet can be found here.
The video is also being shared on Facebook with the same claim.
We also received the video on our email helpline.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The video along with the claim is completely false. The video in circulation is a trimmed version of the 19-minute video uploaded by ‘Times of Today’. The man in the video is not a BJP/RSS leader, but former district president of Congress Seva Dal. In the video the Congress leader was taking a dig at the Prime Minister and the Home Minister for the current situation in the country.
WHAT WE FOUND
The mic used in the video carries a ‘Times of Today’ logo. We went to its YouTube channel and found the complete version of the interview.
At 2:47, the reporter introduces the man as Harish Mishra. Throughout the video, he can be heard praising the Congress party and attacking Narendra Modi and Amit Shah. His quotes have clearly been taken out of context to claim that he is a BJP/RSS member who is bashing his own party.
This is not the first time that such a video involving Harish Mishra has gone viral. In November 2019, The Quint debunked a video claiming that he is a BJP leader giving an open threat to journalists.
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