Hours after reports of the death of senior Congress leader Ahmed Patel emerged, Times Now Editor Navika Kumar noticed a strange behaviour on the Indian National Congress party’s website. Taking to Twitter, Navika Kumar said that the Congress party had deleted Ahmed Patel’s image from the website just hours after his death.
“Truly life is strange,” said Navika Kumar while indirectly highlighting how Congress party had disrespected one of its tallest leaders by removing his image from the list of office-bearers from the party’s website even as his death was being mourned by fellow party colleagues.
Navika Kumar had also shared an image on Twitter which depicted Congress party’s official website. In the image, it can be seen that the party has removed the image and details of the Treasurer of the Congress party.
At the time of his death, Ahmed Patel, a key confidant of Sonia Gandhi, was serving as the Treasurer of the party. Navika Kumar alleged that his details and his image were insensitively removed by the Congress party just hours after his death.
Congress sympathisers, trolls attack Navika Kumar
As Navika Kumar put out tweets highlighting how the images of Ahmed Patel was allegedly removed by the Congress party within hours of his death, the Congress party sympathisers and trolls descended on Twitter to attack and mock Times Now chief Navika Kumar.
Several Congress party workers and trolls abused her, forcing her to delete her earlier tweet.
Another lady even referred to Navika Kumar as ‘Neech’.
Not just Congress IT cell members, even self-proclaimed fact-checkers, who are sympathetic to Congress party and radical Islamic movements too attempted to take a dig at Navika Kumar for posting images that exposed Congress party’s insensitivity towards death of one of its own leaders.
Mohammad Zubair, the co-founder of ‘fake news’ website – Alt News, who is also accused of doxxing minor Hindu girls, took to Twitter to do his so-called ‘fact-checking’ hit job against Navika Kumar.
Zubair posted a series of images from the Congress website to claim that he has a screenshot from mobile as well as laptop to state that the Congress party had never removed the details and images of Ahmed Patel from its website.
According to self-proclaimed ‘fact-checker’ Zubair, the specific image and details of Ahmed Patel existed all along to claim that it was never removed from the website in the first place as hinted by Navika Kumar in her deleted tweet.
Did Navika Kumar lie on Twitter when she said that the Congress party removed his images from website? Let’s analyse
Fact-Check:
The Islamists of Alt News, Congress trolls on social media, who descended on Navika Kumar’s timeline to abuse her and claim that the Congress party did not delete the original image of Ahmed Patel soon after his death is a blatant lie.
Zubair, who posted a series of images to do some kind of ‘fact-check’ on Navika Kumar’s tweet attempted to mislead the public yet again by asserting that it was never removed in the first place.
However, if one looks into the images of Ahmed Patel that shared by Zubair in his ‘fact-check’, it can be seen that Ahmed Patel’s image is completely different from the one that was first uploaded in the website by the Congress party.
Here is the image shared by Zubair (on left) and the original image posted on the website (on right) before being ‘allegedly’ removed by the Congress party. The original image can be seen on the archive of the webpage dated 1st September.
Earlier, the Congress party had uploaded a ‘right-profile face’ image (on the right above) of Ahmed Patel and other details in its website. In addition to Ahmed Patel’s image, who was a Treasurer of the Congress party, there was also some details such as his address, telephone number of his residence on the party’s website before his death.
However, the image (one on the left) uploaded by the Congress party after getting exposed by the likes of Navika Kumar had several discrepancies. The image was also shared by the likes of Zubair and others to claim that the image of Ahmed Patel was never removed by the Congress party in the first place.
The image shared on the party’s website currently, has a ‘left-profile face’ image of Ahmed Patel along with fewer details. Moreover, in the address part, they have removed the pin number, another proof of recent editing done on the page. It may be noted that several archives of the page exist for the last few months, and all of them contain the right-profile image of Patel.
Perhaps, the Congress party thought current post holders should be alive and that is how it should be practical, as a post cannot be held by a dead person, and therefore removed the image and details of the treasurer of the party. However, the new guard of the Congress party perhaps acted too soon and later realised it was bad for optics.
As the likes of Navika Kumar picked the faux pas of the Congress party and posted it on Twitter, the IT team of the party may have thought of undoing the damage caused by them and decided to restore the page. But they selected a different image of Ahmed Patel this time instead of restoring the original image, leaving a digital footprint of the change made.
Not only that, but the Congress party may have also unleashed few of its trolls, ‘fact-checkers’ to keep the likes of Navika Kumar in check to buy some time to undo the damage they had caused.
However, if one looks at the above discrepancies, Navika Kumar was right after all when she said that the Congress party had removed the images of Ahmed Patel from its website soon after his death. Strangely, she had to delete her tweet after being subjected to extreme bullying by ‘fact-checkers’ and the Congress party workers.
