On 30 October, a 20-year-old woman, Gulnaz Khatoon, was burnt alive using kerosene by men who were allegedly threatening and stalking her in Bihar’s Vaishali district. She succumbed to her injuries on 15 November in a hospital in Patna leading to a massive outrage on social media.
Amid this, a photograph of Rashtriya Janata Dal (RJD) leader Tejashwi Yadav participating in a candle march in 2018 has gone viral on social media with a false claim that it shows Tejashwi leading a march to demand justice for the victim.
CLAIM
The aforementioned image is massively viral on Facebook and Twitter with a claim which reads: “बिहार की बेटी गुलनाज़ के इंसाफ के लिए Tejashwi Yadav भैया कैंडल मार्च के साथ सड़क पर उतर गए हैं। देखते हैं अपराधी कब तक फांसी पर लटकते हैं। लेकिन ये एक अच्छी पहल और शुरुआत है कि बिकाऊ सिस्टम के सामने लोग आवाज़ बुलंद करने लगे |”
[Translation: Tejashwi Yadav has taken to the streets to lead a candle march demanding justice for Bihar’s daughter Gulnaz. Let’s see how long will the perpetrators escape justice. It’s a great sign that people are now raising their voice against this corrupt system.]
WHAT WE FOUND
The fact that no one in the viral video can be seen wearing a mask raised suspicions of The Quint’s WebQoof team and we then ran a reverse search on the said photograph and found reports by ABP News and News Nation dated December 2018 which carried similar images and mentioned that they are from a candlelight march that was organised by the Opposition in Bihar in 2018 over the death of businessman Gunjan Khemka. The march was also attended by Tejashwi Yadav.
We compared the viral image with the image shared by ABP News and found that they are indeed from the same event.
The image was also shared by Tejashwi Yadav on Twitter in 2018.
Further, there was no update on RJD’s social media handles regarding Tejashwi participating in a candlelight vigil for the woman who was burnt alive in Bihar's Vaishali.
Clearly, an old image from 2018 was shared to state that RJD leader Tejashwi Yadav took to the streets in Patna to demand justice for the Vaishali victim.
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