BJP’s IT Cell head and the West Bengal co-in-charge Amit Malviya’s counter tweet on the image of an elderly farmer being hit by policemen in Haryana, posted by Congress leader Rahul Gandhi, has run into controversy and is being flagged as “manipulated media” and “misleading”, in what is being claimed as the first such instance in India.
The image, posted by several Congress leaders including Rahul, showed a cop swinging a baton at the farmer who was trying to dodge the blow. Rahul, in his tweet, said as against his party’s slogan of “jai Jawan, Jai kisan,” here Jawan is hitting the Kisan, which is “sad”.
Malviya, responding to Rahul’ tweet, posted a “propaganda vs reality” tweet with a video of the same still with the caption: “Rahul Gandhi must be the most discredited opposition leader India has seen in a long long time”. The video showed the cop raising the baton but the farmer escaping the blow and not touching the elderly farmer.
But fact-check website Alt News put out a longer video of the ‘same incident’, which showed policemen raining blows on protesters. Malviya was accused by critics of using a cropped vidio and not showing it full stretch.
Following this, twitter tagged Malviya’s tweet as “manipulated media”.
It is, however, not clear whether the farmer was “hit” by the same cop in the picture or by some other baton charge in Haryana.
Thousands of farmers, last week, marched towards Delhi for their protest against the centre’s new farm laws and faced teargassing, batons and water cannons at several points in Haryana.