Senior Congress leader Rahul Gandhi shared a picture of a scuffle between police officials and the protesters on Saturday to accuse the Modi government of meting out inhuman atrocities on the protesters.
मोदी सरकार का ट्रेडमार्क- अमानवीय अत्याचार! pic.twitter.com/LL2KGeBTjg
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) January 30, 2021
The pictures shared by the former Congress president showed police officers using force to control the protesters demonstrating against the Agriculture Laws that were introduced by the Modi government in September 2020.
However, as is the norm with Rahul Gandhi, he was economical with the truth while sharing the pictures of the clashes between the police officials and the protesters. The senior Congress leader only shared those details of the incident that were convenient for him to paint the government as predisposed to using brute force to quell the protests. The reality is starkly different than what Rahul Gandhi would have us believe.
The images uploaded by Rahul Gandhi are from the clashes between the protesters and the police officials that took place yesterday at the Singhu border, the epicentre of the two-months long farmers’ protest against three central laws. During the clashes, Delhi Police SHO (Alipur) Pradeep Paliwal was injured in the violence after a man, claiming to be one of the protesting ‘farmers’, attacked him with a sword.
The images shared by Rahul Gandhi were of the police action in the wake of the sword attack against SHO Paliwal. The protester had allegedly swung his sword at the SHO, injuring him.
राहुल गांधी का ट्रेडमार्क – झूठ और दुष्प्रचार! https://t.co/tbaoEiESXb pic.twitter.com/371ZzLoBzT
— S. Vishnu Vardhan Reddy (@SVishnuReddy) January 30, 2021
The protester was later identified as 22-year-old Ranjeet Singh and was arrested for the sword attack on Alipur SHO. Besides Singh, Delhi Police arrested another 43 people over the clashes at the Singhu border (Delhi-Haryana border) on Friday. Clashes had erupted between protesting ‘farmers’ and a group of people claiming to be locals as police officials resorted to lathi-charge and used tear gas shells to disperse the crowd.
An FIR has been filed under relevant sections of the Indian Penal Code (IPC) over the Singhu border clashes on Friday, police said.
However, Rahul Gandhi conveniently shared only those pictures where police were seen using force to arrest Singh who had brought a sword along with him in the clashes. Gandhi also did not share the image of the protester wielding a sword that had gone viral on social media websites as that would have shattered his narrative of depicting the Modi government as cruel and unsympathetic to the protesters.
By accusing the Modi government of being cruel against the protesters wielding swords, Rahul Gandhi, in essence, is encouraging the protesters to resort to violent means and methods to clash against the law enforcement officials. The protests, which were deemed to be ‘peaceful’ by the opposition parties, have assumed violent character, especially during the tractor rally on Republic Day when rampaging protesters ran riots, indulging in violence and vandalism on the streets of the national capital.
Rahul Gandhi and Congress leaders had shared a misleading picture to allege police officials had beaten up a protester
It is noteworthy to mention that this is not the first attempt by Rahul Gandhi to portray the Modi government as anti-farmers and apathetic towards them. In November 2020, Rahul Gandhi, along with a bevvy of Congress sycophants, had shared a misleading image of a policeman brandishing a baton to a demonstrator to allege that the Modi government was callous in treating the farmers.
However, the reality was different than what the Congress leader and his supporters tried to trumpet. The video of the incident showed that the law enforcement official who was portrayed in the image as beating up an old ‘farmer’ simply swings the baton in the air to scare the protester away. The baton did not touch the protester. Yet, Rahul Gandhi and other Congress leaders and its IT cell bots deceitfully used the picture to paint the security official as the oppressor and the protester as the victim.
