Self-proclaimed ‘fact-checker’ Zubair from Alt News was again caught on Thursday notoriously spreading fake news on social media. This time he has tried passing off 4-year-old news as a current one to berate Hindus.
A Twitter user going by the handle @SmokingSkills shared a screenshot of Zubair’s Tweet and the original piece of news to call out the lie of the Islamist propagandist who has regularly uses social media to spread misinformation and lies.
Meet @Twitter’s official fact checker who spreads old news in order to create communal rift. pic.twitter.com/hYiw5FJmJO
— Smoking Skills (@SmokingSkills_) February 11, 2021
Mohammed Zubair, who has quietly deleted the Tweet after being called out, had shared a Hindi article in his Tweet, which he posted in the afternoon today. In his attempt to demonise Hindus, Zubair highlighted that a ‘Baghwadhari’ (saffron-robed) baba absconded with Rs 15-20 lakh temple offerings. While sharing the screenshot of the Hindi report, Zubair carefully edited out the date of the report, so that he could pass it off as a current report.
However, Zubair’s painstaking efforts soon went in vain, as Twitter user Smoking Skills shared that screenshot of the original report which was published by Hindi Daily Dainik Bhaskar, 4-years-ago.
The 4-year-old news item was about a fake Sadhu who had apparently collected donations from villagers and absconded with temple funds.
Zubair and Alt News peddle misinformation and lies quite frequently. In fact, last year, activist Ankur Singh in a series of tweets took it upon himself to lay bare Zubair’s penchant to lie and rumour-monger.
In a thread that ran over 25 tweets, Singh had exposed Mohammed Zubair’s constant lies, misinformation habit of quietly deleting those tweets once they go viral without issuing any clarification.
Prior to this, an FIR has been lodged against AltNews co-founder Mohammed Zubair under stringent POCSO Act for online harassment of a girl child.