CLAIM
A video allegedly showing PM Narendra Modi speaking to the widow of a soldier who was martyred in the blast in Pulwama has gone viral on social media in the backdrop of the attack.
The video, which was uploaded on Sunday, 17 February, by a Facebook page called ‘बहुचर्चित मुख्यमंत्री योगी आदित्य नाथ जी-Unofficial’, is titled “When Modiji himself called the wife of a soldier”.
In the video, Modi appears to be speaking to the widow, telling her that he had tried to visit her at her home, but that he had not been able to do so owing to bad weather, which had prevented his helicopter from landing. He tells her that she should not worry and that she and her child are now the party’s responsibility.
Following the clip of Modi and the woman, a man appears on screen and sings a song in praise of Modi.
The video had over 700k views at the time this story was written and over 10k shares.
TRUE OR FALSE?
In the video, the woman mentions at one point that her daughter, who is two and a half years old, is named Sonakshi Srivastava. It is possible to infer from this that the woman in the video is the widow of a solider whose last name would have been Srivastava.
A way to successfully bust the claim that the martyr in question was one of the 40 CRPF jawans killed in Pulwama is to go through the list of their names. After the blast in Jammu and Kashmir, the CRPF headquarters in Delhi had released a list of the 40 martyrs. However, no Srivastava features on that list, which had been accessed by The Quint.
In the backdrop of the Pulwama attack, what makes it easy for people to believe that the woman is the widow of a CRPF jawan killed in Pulwama, is that Modi mentions the word ‘terrorist’ multiple times over his call. But the lack of a Srivastava on the list makes it clear that the martyr cannot be that of the Pulwama attack.
A simple Google search of ‘Modi speaks to Srivastava’ throws up the reality of this video. The video, while actually showing Narendra Modi speaking to the wife of a man who was killed, is originally from 2 November 2013.
The video had also been uploaded in November 2013 on Modi’s official YouTube channel and narendramodi.in, Modi’s official website, with all the correct details of the backdrop of the call.
Modi himself had also tweeted about the incident on the same day, saying that he had spoken to the wife of Shaheed Munna Srivastava on the phone. His Facebook page also had an update about the same.
Further searches about the martyr in question show news reports of Munna Srivastava being killed in the Patna bomb blasts in 2013. An ANI report states that Modi was indeed attempting to visit the family in question in Gopalganj, as part of his visit to the families of the six people who had been killed ahead of Modi’s Hunkar rally in Patna on 27 October 2013.
The six-year-old video also went viral once in 2017.
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