Prathap NM, a young man from Karnataka, also hailed as India’s youngest ‘drone scientist’, found himself in a controversy after a German company stated that the drone flashed by Prathap as his creation during a TV interview was actually developed by them and displayed at an Exhibition centre in 2018.
Prathap rose to fame with his claim of having made 600 drones from e-waste at the age of 22, a story which was covered by several news outlets including Deccan Herald and India Times. However, the ‘young scientist’ is yet to produce any proof whatsoever to support his long list of achievements.
Earlier on 7 July, The Quint debunked a viral claim stating that after recognising his achievements, Prime Minister Narendra Modi has offered to induct Prathap into the Defence Research and Development Organisation (DRDO).
THE CLAIM
After several doubts were raised regarding the achievements of ‘drone boy’ Prathap, he appeared on a news show hosted by Kannada channel ‘BTV News Kannada’ to issue clarifications and furnish proofs.
In an interview spanning over 40 minutes, Prathap flashed his photographs with drones purportedly made by him and presented several certificates as proofs of international awards he has claimed to have won in the past.
Thirty-two minutes and 31 seconds into the video, Prathap shows his image with a drone he has supposedly designed and won an award for. During the entire course of the interview, he makes several other claims including having won Gold medals at the International Robotics Exhibition (iREX) in Japan and CeBit, a computer expo organised every year in Germany.
Claims about Prathap’s achievements are also viral on Facebook and Twitter.
WHAT WE FOUND
According to a statement released by a German company ‘BillzEye Multicoptersysteme’, the drone alongside Prathap in the image flashed during the interview actually belongs to them.
In the statement, Bill Gutbier, the owner of the company, mentioned that BillzEye displayed the aforementioned drone at CeBIT 2018 in Hanover, Germany and like many other visitors, Prathap was also interested in taking a photograph with the drones.
Further, Prathap claimed that he was awarded the ‘Albert Einstein Innovation Gold Medal’ at the CeBIT trade fair in 2018.
However, we found out that there is no such award. Secondly, the CeBit Innovation Awards are given to companies and not individuals.
We also looked for other images of Prathap with drones and contrary to his claims of having designed them, most of them turned out to be commercially produced machines.
Prathap’s claim that he had won a Gold medal at the International Robotics Exhibition held in Tokyo in 2017 also turned out to be false. We checked the website of the event for results and found no mention of Prathap winning any award.
Evidently, there are multiple discrepancies in the information provided by Prathap in the public domain and no proof of any of his achievements.
(We have reached out to Prathap for a response. This story will be updated as soon as we hear from him.)
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