CLAIM
A tweet, seemingly by Mirror Now journalist Faye D’Souza, has gone viral on the social media platform.
The tweet, dated 9 July 2018, says that the child trafficking being carried out by Christian missionaries in Ranchi is not a cause for worry because at least “they’re being trafficked, means guided to some direction.” The tweet ends with “Hope it’s the direction towards Jesus, not Hindu patriarchy.”
There are 186 retweets and 1,153 likes on the tweet. One of the replies on the tweet even commented on Faye’s “amazing humanity”.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The tweet is fake and has been created by someone. The matter came up on Thursday, 21 February because of the tweet by @shadaksharayyah, to which Faye responded by threatening to report the person in question to the Mumbai Police, also tagging @TwitterIndia.
The tweet has now been deleted by the person in question.
She also pointed out that the words ‘fictional tweet’ were written in very small letters at the bottom of the tweet.
However, The Quint found that this was not a fresh occurrence but had taken place in July 2018 itself, when somebody had posted the fake tweet in Faye’s name. On 9 July 2018, D’Souza had tweeted out an image of the fake tweet, calling it a “new low”, saying that she obviously hadn’t tweeted this.
In her thread of tweets, she also mentioned that she had not tweeted in a few days because she had been travelling, a claim which The Quint found was true, having gone back to her Twitter timeline between 1 July and 10 July.
A Twitter user had also informed her in July 2018 that a Facebook page called ‘Presstitutes’ was also spreading more misinformation about her alleged tweet.
The screenshots attached with this tweet show the Facebook page and its posts about the tweet, saying “and she is a journalist...I wonder what will happen if Modi loses.”
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