Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal is desperate to prove that Narendra Modi’s demonetisation drive is causing widespread death and destruction in India. He has been repeating an exaggerated number of 55 deaths, linking all of them to demonetisation even though relatives of the dead claim otherwise.
A couple of days back he called a BBC journalist dishonest because he cross-questioned Kejriwal’s claim of 55 deaths. Today, he went a step ahead and spread a repulsive rumour about a young man who committed suicide because he couldn’t get cash from bank.
This is what he tweeted:
Even looking at the picture itself, one could sense that something was terribly wrong, and it can’t be what Kejriwal claimed to be. Can a person commit suicide in full public view in a public place like a commercial bank while no one around comes to stop him?
But when you are driven by an agenda and are full of hate, you become blind to facts. This is what happened with Kejriwal.
The picture that he had tweeted was of a bank robber who had hanged himself in the wee hours of Saturday after police surrounded him. The incident happened in Satna district of Madhya Pradesh and was reported by many media organizations such as Dainik Bhaskar, Nai Duniya, Navbharat Times, Times of India, and ABP News among others.
The robber, identified as a man named Dharmendra Patel, is reported to be a history-sheeter and has been arrested in such cases earlier too. He was trapped inside the bank by local villagers who brought down the shutter from outside while he was trying to steal cash and valuables kept inside the bank. His activities are also reported to have been captured by a CCTV camera.
This fact was pointed out to Kejriwal by many on Twitter, such as the following tweet, but Kejriwal didn’t correct himself or offered any apology for spreading rumour and panic. The above tweet was on his Twitter page at the time of filing this report (which is more than an hour after Kejriwal tweeted):
@ArvindKejriwal @meamabhishek झूठ ना फैलाए pic.twitter.com/4FegNpjgx8
— जज़्बात.. (@R_Vinod01) November 20, 2016
Although Arvind Kejriwal had been spreading misinformation in “is is true?” style for long, looks like now he has decided to spread lies and rumours just like his supporters do. For example, this Facebook page, apparently managed by AAP supporters, spread the same lie about the above incident.
Such irresponsible and ignorant behaviour by the AAP supremo confirms what the Union Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad had told about him yesterday:
It is sad to see the evolution of Kejriwal Ji from the Chief Minister of Delhi to Chief Rumour Monger of Delhi!
— Ravi Shankar Prasad (@rsprasad) November 19, 2016
But does Kejriwal care?
