As the country progresses in the era of demonetisation, there has been no shortage of rumour mongering as was continuously reported by us [1] [2] [3]. One of those who appear to have emerged as the front runners in rumour mongering to spread panic among the masses is Arvind Kejriwal and his supporters.
We did a piece recently exposing how AAP on 13th November used news clips of 2015 in order to spread panic among the people. The news piece from 2015 reported how RBI planned a mass leave on 19th November 2015 to protest against Modi Government’s alleged intrusions. Posting such a news just before 19th November 2016 exposed AAP’s intent, i.e. to make people believe this is a recent news.
AAP’s supremo Arvind Kejriwal later went a step ahead and shared a picture of an alleged poor bank customer who had killed himself out of utter frustration of being unable to withdraw cash. The truth however was that the man was a bank robber and committed the act after he was trapped by locals. The tweet which Kejriwal shared was later deleted, the twitter account of Youtuber Abhishek Mishra who was the brain child behind the rumour was reported to the cops and the account was deactivated, yet Kejriwal’s false tweet exists and he has not apologised for his lies.
After getting repeatedly exposed and panned heavily, one might feel that Kejriwal would have learnt his lesson and would finally stop spreading false news. But today he tweeted this story from a little known site:
पिछले हफ़्ते 6000 cr लोन माफ़ कर दिया, अब ये? ऐसे उड़ाओगे हमारा पैसा?
SBI to give $1-billion loan to Gautam Adani https://t.co/QZhtoReJBU
— Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 22, 2016
The allegations that the Government might be using the demonetised cash and bank deposits to fund crony capitalism were pretty severe. But Kejriwal’s tweet was fully exposed on social media:
News from 2014
AAPtards made a site resembling India Today
Kejriwal uses it to Lie Modi is giving loan to Adani from #Demonetisation money pic.twitter.com/BCdrYeWXOG
— Ankur Singh (@iAnkurSingh) November 22, 2016
This was a fraud of epic proportions. First of all, the news of SBI proposing to give a loan to Adani was from 2014 as noted from the Indian Express article. Presumably some miscreants made a clone site of India Today in which they passed off this old report as news from 4 days ago. It might be noted that ‘indialivetoday.com’ to the unobservant eye might easily have passed off as Indiatodaylive, thereby giving credence to Kejriwal’s tweet. Not just that, Kejriwal even retweeted a tweet by an AAP-leaning journalist which shared the same news.
When we last checked, the site had changed the date of the article to November 18, 2014, thereby completely back-tracking. The journalist too had deleted his tweet carrying the misleading news. Yet Kejriwal still believes and has already spread the rumour that this news is as recent as 4 days back.
Kejriwal’s tweet is intact. Just like the earlier case where Mishra, the original tweet and tweeter both have disappeared but Kejriwal’s tweet remains. Because his job is to spread rumour, not spread the reality?
The 2nd level of this fraud by Kejriwal and the site is the fact that way back in April 2015 itself, it was reported that this proposed loan from SBI to Adani had not materialised.
So try to gauge the extent of Kejriwal’s lies: He blindly trusts an unknown site which posted a 2 year old news item as a recent one. He uses this to link the news to demonetisation to incite the public. The site back-tracks but Kejriwal is firm. The underlying news event which was supposed to have happened, never happened. And Kejriwal’s blind followers have lapped it up and are posting this news as fact on every social media forum.
Can this be a coincidence? AAP shares a 2015 news report. Kejriwal shares a hoax death tweet. Kejriwal again shares a 2014 news item which never happened. In all three cases neither AAP nor Kejriwal retract or offer any apology.
Are these honest mistakes? Or is this a plan? Is this the next progression from Kejriwal’s “Is it true” campaign? If so Indian politics may have just descended into very dark days.
