Even as the country is facing an unprecedented crisis stemming from the coronavirus outbreak, the well-oiled lie factory at ‘The Wire’ and its ‘journalists’ like Rohini Singh is busy doing what it does best- churning out lie and peddling fake news.
Recently, habitual fake news purveyor, Rohini Singh, authored an article for ‘The Wire’, titled- “Behind Ahmedabad’s Ventilator Controversy, a Backstory of Connections to Top BJP Leaders” which alleged that the Narendra Modi government is procuring 5000 ventilators from a Rajkot based firm which has already been accused of supplying substandard breathing machines to the Ahmedabad’s largest COVID-19 hospital.
Alluding ‘conflict of interest’, the article goes on to claim that the firm’s current and former promoters have had close ties to the BJP leaders-with one business family linked to the expensive suit that was gifted to PM Modi.
Singh conjectures that the ventilators, which the doctors in Ahmedabad hospital have declared to be not up to snuff, may have been procured through the financial resources provided by the PM Cares fund which had claimed earlier this month that it would be spending about Rs 2000 crore on making purchases for “made in India” ventilators.
She then proceeds to claim that the Gujarat government has displayed an unprecedented enthusiasm in promoting the machines which have been patently rejected by the doctors in Ahmedabad’s COVID-19 hospital as inferior and below standard. Singh said that the machines, called as ‘Dhaman-1’, were “aggressively promoted by the Gujarat government”, mentioning chief minister Vijay Rupani as one of the most ardent supporters of the machines.
Singh then moves on to insinuate that the political connections with the firm manufacturing the aforementioned ventilators with the BJP leaders, including PM Modi himself, maybe one of the possible reasons for the Gujarat government to “procure” ventilators from Jyoti CNC, the Rajkot-based ventilator manufacturing firm.
In her bid to tie the “procurement” of ventilators by the Gujarat government to the close-ties shared by the Viranis, one of the business families associated with Jyoti CNC, with PM Modi, Singh highlights the incident when PM Modi was gifted by the Viranis an expensive suit with his name monogrammed all over which he wore during his meeting with then US President Barack Obama in 2015.
Singh was essentially trying to imply that the BJP government in Gujarat may have struck a ‘quid pro quo’ with the Rajkot-based firm, which has unequivocally expressed its support for PM Modi, by procuring the so-called faulty ventilators.
However, the Press Information Bureau of India took cognisance of the lies and deceit peddled by Ms Singh in The Wire. The official Twitter handle of PIB issued a tweet denouncing the article published on the leftist rag as fake. PIB claimed that the ventilators which Ms Singh is talking about in her article were not procured but were received as a donation. It further added that the quality of the ventilators, which is continuously being ridiculed in the article published on The Wire was in accordance with the required medical standards.
Claim-@Rohini_sgh claims in @thewire_in that the Dhaman-I ventilators at #Ahmedabad Civil Hospital are substandard and were purchased#PIBFactCheck–#FakeNews According to Govt of Gujarat,the said ventilators were not purchased but donated & are based on required medical standards pic.twitter.com/5SCTeuznZK
— PIB Fact Check (@PIBFactCheck) May 22, 2020
Rohini Singh: Habitual fake news peddler
This is not the first time that the Wire, especially Rohini Singh, has been involved in sharing untenable stories. Ms Singh has a knack of coming up with fake stories laced with innuendos and insinuations every once in a while. Earlier in 2017, Rohini Singh came up with an article on The Wire, alleging impropriety in business dealings of Jay Shah.
Their article, which was riddled with glaring loopholes and inaccuracy, which was decimated by OpIndia. The major “expose” by Rohini Singh prove: It shows how a company owned by Amit Shah’s son, made a loss of Rs 1.48 crores as soon as Modi came into power, and eroded its net worth, forcing it to shut operations.
Another company took standard business finance facilities from a cooperative bank. These finance facilities were misrepresented by Singh as “loan”. It also made use of a Government scheme to promote renewable energy by taking a loan for a wind power project. While narrating this Singh could not even distinguish between a negative reserves position from a positive position.
Subsequently, after questions were raised on the veracity of claims made by Ms Singh, The Wire retreated, altered its story marginally to save itself from the imminent embarrassment. Nevertheless, it failed even in that.
In response to the shoddy story, Jay Shah had slapped ‘The Wire’ with a ₹100 crore defamation case against them. The Supreme Court, in its scathing observation, pulled up The Wire for being in a hurry to publish their story on Jay Shah and said that it was ‘nothing short of yellow journalism’.
