Putting out old videos and pictures to mislead people is one of the most common ways adopted by the purveyors of fake news to go about their business.
The Quint came across three such videos recently, which have no recent relevance as well as make fake claims.
CLAIM
A Facebook page धर्मवीर छत्रपती संभाजी महाराज posted these videos on Sunday, 10 February, with the same caption for each of them. The caption reads: काॅग्रेस मिटींगमघ्ये पाकिस्तान झिंदाबाद,पोलीसांनी नेते ठोकले,द्या काँग्रेसला मत?उघडा डोळे,बघा निट.... बोला जय हिंद (Congress leaders who chanted 'Pakistan Zindabad' in a meeting, thrashed by police. Will you vote for Congress? Open your eyes to see clearly. Say Jai Hind)
The post then goes on to put up three videos:
TRUE OR FALSE
All the three videos are old and the claim that Congress leaders are chanting pro- Pakistani slogans are also false. In fact, one of the videos had been debunked by The Quint ahead of the recent Rajasthan Assembly elections.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
The first video had gone viral in November last year, in the lead up to the Rajasthan polls, with a number of social media handles claiming that Congress workers in Rajasthan’s Rajsamand raised slogans of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ at what appears to be a party meeting.
The claim is false as the workers were in fact, saying “Bhaati-saab Zindabad”, in support of the Congress candidate from the constituency.
The video was retweeted by Zoheb Shaikh, the social media in-charge of Rajasthan Congress, who said that the video had been spread by elements associated with the BJP with an agenda to create unrest in the state.
Speaking to The Quint, Shaikh had further clarified that the video was from a 25 November event held at Rajsamand’s Kankroli.
“If you hear carefully, the workers gathered are not raising Pakistan Zindabad slogans, but are saying ‘Bhaati-saab Zindabad’, hailing Narayan Singh Bhaati, the Congress candidate from that constituency,” he had said.
The other two videos are even older. Reverse image search of clippings from the second and third videos revealed that they are from an incident in Bilaspur in Chattisgarh, in September last year.
On 19 September 2018, the police lathi-charged Congress workers at an event in Bilaspur. The incident was reported widely in the media, but none of them said anything about the Congress workers chanting Pakistan Zindabaad.
In fact, nobody can be heard chanting even in the videos.
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