A person named Abdul Salam, the former district president of the banned Islamist radical organisation PFI (Popular Front of India), has been arrested by Bhilwara Police for raising pro-Pakistan slogans in a rally. A case in the matter was registered on May 15 this year after a video went viral in which Pakistan Zindabad slogans could be heard. Propaganda website Alt News also did a fact-check and gave a clean chit to the PFI leader.
The Station House Officer of the police station stated that the viral video was sent for forensic analysis following the complaint. As seen in the video, the investigation found that Pakistan Zindabad shouts were raised. Furthermore, it was discovered that the rally was held on February 7, 2021, for Nathulal Rao, who won the election from Ward 57 on a ticket of SDPI, the political wing of the PFI.
The rally was led by Abdul Salam Ansari, former district president of PFI. The people involved in the rally are clearly visible raising slogans in support of Pakistan. It is based on this PFI leader Abdul Salam Ansari was arrested by the police.
In charge of the Subhash Nagar police station, Nandlal Rinwa stated that on May 15, 2022, Nemichand’s son Babulal Khatik, a resident of Sanganer, filed a complaint in this regard, and the video was sent for forensic examination. According to the forensic report, which came on Monday, Pakistan Zindabad shouts were raised during the rally. Rinwa stated that Abdul Salam has been held and is being probed for the details of other persons who were present at the march and that necessary action is being taken.
Alt News and Mohammed Zubair had given clean chit to the PFI rally in which ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans were raised
Notably, days after the complaint was registered and the matter gained currency, the far-left propaganda website Alt News, which is infamous for shielding Islamists, resorted to defending PFI, claiming that no pro-Pak slogans were raised in the rally. It gave a clean chit to PFI leader Abdul Salam and claimed that ‘SDPI Zindabad’ slogans were raised which were being passed off as ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans on social media. The archived version of the report can be found here.
Notably, Alt News also quoted Abdul Salam, the PFI leader who has now been arrested for organizing the rally. “The viral video is from February 7, 2021, after the local election. The video shows a segment of the rally after SDPI’s Nathulal Rao won in Ward 57. The claim that pro-Pakistan slogans were chanted is false,” reported Alt News as the quote by Abdul Salam Ansari.
At the end of the report, Alt News mentioned, “The claim that pro-Pakistan slogans were raised in the video is false.” They stated that the chant is “SDPI Zindabad” and not “Pakistan Zindabad.” The co-founder of the propaganda portal Mohammed Zubair, who has been booked in several cases for fostering enmity between communities and instigating riots, also took to Twitter in May 2022 to support the claim.
Not only did Alt News mislead its readers into believing that protesters attending the PFI rally chanted ‘SDPI Zindabad’, but it also tried to undermine the allegations against the Islamist organisation by highlighting that the video was from February 2021 and not May 2022, as if chanting slogans in support of Pakistan in February 2021 were acceptable and would not have attracted penal charges.
However, Alt News seems to have mastered this devious practice of highlighting inconsequential discrepancies to prove the attendant claims made along with the viral video are false. The protesters chanted ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ slogans in the rally, but Zubair and Alt News emphasised that the video was more than a year old, from February 2021, and that the protesters were chanting slogans in support of PFI.
Alt News and its devious modus operandi
Alt News has been leaning on dishonest methods as a part of its modus operandi to give a boost to its propaganda of keeping the Muslim victimhood narrative alive. It has mastered several methods to further its narrative while disproving a contrarian worldview. Besides using reverse search images for its propaganda purposes, it has also emphasised nitpicking about petty and irrelevant details of an incident to muddle the readers and sow doubts about the narrative around the incident.
For instance, in 2020, when the videos of Muslim vegetable vendors applying saliva to their produce had gone viral, Alt News tried to water down the act by alleging that the video of a Muslim vegetable vendor spitting on the vegetables was not from April but from February, as if spitting on the vegetables in February was totally in accordance with the prevailing societal norms.
