A video went viral on social media recently, in which an Indian student allegedly stranded in Ukraine was seen expressing his anger against the Indian government for not evacuating him from the war-torn country.
The student identified as Rashid Rizwan claimed that a few students were allegedly stuck in war-torn Ukraine for more than ten hours near the border, and no official has contacted them. Rizwan claimed the group of students left for the border last afternoon, but no official has either responded to their help or they have made contact about their evacuation process.
Listen to this Indian Student Stuck at Ukraine -Hungry border . Rizwan is from Gopalganj in Bihar .He is losing his will and hope . @MEAIndia @NitishKumar @PMOIndia .Please Speed up the process of evacuation.
— Ankur Agrawal (@TvWalllah) February 26, 2022
My dear Students stay strong #IndiansInUkraine #UkraineUnderAttack pic.twitter.com/tfZ6qqsH3t
The student, who was seen crying, said he preferred to die rather than be in his current situation. Attacking the Modi government, the student questioned the credibility of the Indian government and its officials, as he tagged many officials and Indian government accounts for help.
The video of Rizwan abusing the Indian government over its alleged ‘failure’ to evacuate Indians went viral on social media platforms. The left-liberals and the opposition party supporters picked up the purported claims made by Rizwan to discredit the Modi government’s efforts to evacuate over 18,000 students stuck in Ukraine.
The videos were aggressively shared to misinform the public that the Indian government had left the Indian students studying in Ukraine on their own and claimed that the Indian government did not have any plans to evacuate them.
It is pertinent to note that such misleading claims were made even as the Indian government launched ‘Operation Ganga’ to bring back the stranded Indian public in Ukraine. As a result, more than three flights carrying 710 Indians have already left Romania and Hungary, the neighbours of Ukraine, by boarding Air India flights. Many more are being planned and coordination efforts are on.
Rashid Rizwan – an avid supporter of rioters and Islamists
Amidst these scare-mongering and misinformation campaigns, netizens have found out more details about Rashid Rizwan and his antecedents.
According to social media users, Rashid Rizwan is from the Gopalganj district of Bihar. In the past, Rizwan has been allegedly part of several anti-India propaganda on social media platforms. Rashid Rizwan, who had posted the video from Ukraine from his Twitter handle “@rshdrizwan’, had put up fake propaganda against the Indian government.
In 2020, Rizwan had posted a heart-wrenching image of a three-year-old child, sitting on the blood-splattered body of his grandfather, killed by the Pakistan sponsored terrorists. By posting the misleading image, he had tried to propagate a dangerous narrative that Kashmir had become Syria.
Without naming the Modi government, Rizwan had insinuated that the government had converted the ‘heaven’ Kashmir into a ‘hell’.
The netizens reminded the social media users that Rizwan had a rich history of peddling misinformation to spread propaganda against the Indian government.
Another screenshot of a tweet put out by Rizwan has also gone viral. In the tweet, Rizwan was seen protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act outside his college in Ukraine. The Citizenship Amendment Act was a domestic issue that granted citizenship to the six most persecuted minorities of three Islamic countries – Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.
Netizens accused Rizwan of involving in protests against a law that was passed by a democratically elected government, that too on foreign soil.
Not just that, Rizwan was also seen supporting radical Islamist, and Anti-Hindu Delhi riots accused Safoora Zargar.
In a tweet, Rizwan had claimed that Zargar, who is accused in a UAPA case for orchestrating the Anti-Hindu Delhi Riots, was arrested because she was a Muslim. He claimed that Delhi police arrested only Muslims and did not act against Hindus even they were murderers.
Rizwan, who stays in Ukraine, very much actively propagated misinformation about political events that took place in India. After the Modi government decided to scrap the farm laws, Rizwan said on Twitter that it was not just the victory of farmers but also the victory of Shaheen Bagh Anti-CAA protests. He said that these protestors knew how to oppose the fascist government.
Adding fuel to his anti-India views, he has now claimed that the Indian government is not doing anything to evacuated stranded Indians even as one can see the government has working round the clock to bring back Indians.
Amidst the ongoing clashes, the Indian government is putting all its efforts to bring back the Indian citizens residing in Ukraine. Slowly, the Indians are being brought back, thanks to quick intervention from the Indian governmnet. The Indian government has launched ‘Operation Ganga’ to run rescue flights, and so far, over 700 people have been brought back safely to India from Ukraine.
It is estimated that more than 18,000 Indians are waiting to return to India, and the Modi government has been working with several countries, including Ukraine’s neighbours such as Russia, Bulgaria, Romania, Hungary, Poland, etc., to evacuate Indians in a quick time. So the likes of Rizwan should perhaps be criticising the Indian government less and patiently be waiting for their turn to return to India.
