Thirty-seven people from the 60-member WhatsApp group named ‘Unity against Left’ have been identified by the Special Investigation Team (SIT), said the Delhi Police in a press conference on Friday. According to the police, the group was created against the Left parties on January 5, the day when violence broke out in Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) premises. The action against Whatsapp groups comes after Delhi police had released identities of nine accused in the JNU violence case.
Soon after the violence broke out, screenshots of the WhatsApp group called ‘Unity Against Left’ purportedly used by the mobsters to coordinate the violence started making rounds on social media. Part of such conversation was shared by former NDTV anchor Barkha Dutt in a tweet late night on Sunday.
Later, several conspiracy theories began to float on social media, claiming that the Whatsapp group ‘Unity against Left’ was responsible for the violence inside the JNU campus on Sunday. As the name insinuated that it was against left-wing, the blame was quickly shifted on ABVP, implying that the sender of the message was ‘against Left’ and hence by default it was ABVP, the student wing of the RSS.
In fact, since the violence broke out in JNU, the usual suspects were busy propagating and making noise that it was the ‘ABVP goons’ who were on a rampage on campus despite the fact that they were masked. Later, several facts began to emerge which exposed a conspiracy against the ABVP members.
It was revealed that certain numbers in the Whatsapp group ‘Unity against Left’ belonged to people who were actively associated with the Congress party. Screenshots of WhatsApp conversations shared by former NDTV anchor Barkha Dutt had number linked to a person named Anand Mangnale.
Mangnale was involved in various crowdfunding events for the Congress party and had involved with Prashant Kishore, who had earlier worked as a strategist for ex-Congress President Rahul Gandhi in 2016 ahead of Uttar Pradesh state assembly elections.
After the initial Congress link emerged in the JNU violence, Congress quickly tried to dissociate itself from Anand and discarded his association, whatever he had, with the party. The Congress party had claimed that the number belongs to a private vendor they had hired for Lok Sabha elections and it had discontinued the association after that.
But, it was once again revealed that Anand is still very much part of crowdfunding for Congress and Congress leaders as he had involved in a crowdfunding event for Congress’ national spokesperson Gourav Vallabh as recent as November 2019.
It seems there have been concerted campaigns against the ABVP in an alleged effort to save the ultra left-wing students, who are the main accused in the JNU violence. As Delhi police revealed that seven left-wing students, including Aishe Ghosh – the president of JNUSU – and four left students organisations were responsible for the barbaric violence that was inflicted on students on the campus, left-wing ‘liberal-secular’ media have resorted to a hit job against the ABVP.
“Those identified for the violence includes – Chunchun Kumar, Pankaj Mishra, Aishe Ghosh, Waskar Vijay, Sucheta Talukraj, Priya Ranjan, Dolan Sawant, Yogendra Bhardwaj, Vikas Patel,” DCP Joy Tirkey, who is heading an SIT had said on Friday.
Soon after Delhi police carried out the press conference in which evidence was released to the public regarding the involvement of ultra-left-wing students in the violence, India Today had come up with a shoddy sting operation claiming two JNU students allegedly belonging to the ABVP confessed on camera for instigating violence and vandalising the Sabarmati hostel on January 5.
A detailed fact-check was done by OpIndia regarding the so-called India Today sting operation and proved that the whole investigation was nothing but lies and half-truths to falsely implicate ABVP and absolve left-wing forces from its crimes that they had unleashed on JNU campus.
India Today had not only failed to prove that the two members belonged to ABVP but also indulged in fake news by sharing misleading images.
Responding to India Today’s hit job, the nationalist students’ organisation ABVP had categorically rejected charges that the two alleged JNU students were associated with the organisation. Despite clarifications by the ABVP, India Today had carried out their fake story to mislead the public on the JNU violence.
Following these fake sting operations, the Sharad Pawar-led Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) has demanded that the Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad (ABVP), the student wing of the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) be banned.
Interestingly, one of the students- Akshat Awasthi, who India Today had ‘exposed’ in its fake sting operation on Saturday as a member of ABVP, had retracted his statements by stating that whatever statements he had made to the India Today reporter were false and said he only such confessions simply to display bravado. In fact, Awasthi has said that he is not even a member of ABVP.
