Ashok Swain, an internet troll for whom spreading disinformation to defame India seems to be an integral part of his daily routine, recently took to Twitter to spread lies and undermine India’s communal harmony.
Sharing a video of a mob thrashing a person, Swain, who works as a Professor at Uppsala University in Sweden, gave a communal colour to the assault, insinuating that the man faced a near-fatal lynching attack for being a Muslim.
“Another day, another lynching! One more Muslim man being lynched in Maharashtra, India,” Swain tweeted.
In a subsequent tweet, Swain said the attack was brutal, but the man survived and was in the hospital.
However, contrary to what Swain would have his followers believe, the man seen in the viral video was not attacked because of being a Muslim. The mob thrashed him on suspicion of being a thief.
यह एक चोर है इसके बारे में पता लगाया गया है पेल्हार पोलिस अन्तर्गत 5 आरोपियों को अटेस्ट किया गया है FIR दाखिल हो गया है इस केस आयो 7588196180 अनिल मस्के है । यह जो मार खा रहा है यह एक चोर है पोलिस ने जान बचाया इसका और मारने वालो पर और मार खाने वाले के ऊपर FIR दाखिल हुवा है ।
— अरुण कुमार श्रीवास्तव (@bjp4arunks) December 4, 2022
The local police arrested 5 people involved in the incident after the video of the thrashing went viral on the internet. According to the police, the incident occurred on December 1 in the Pelhar region of Maharashtra.
Meanwhile, the police have also filed a case against the victim on theft charges.
“A thief was severely injured after people thrashed him in the Pelhar area of Nalasopara in Palghar, four days ago, the video is now viral over the Internet. A case has been registered against the victim on the theft charges, and five other people were also arrested for beating the thief,” the police said.
Nevertheless, the case underscores the perverse urge among the Left ideologues to paint any untoward incident involving a victim belonging to a minority community as religiously motivated, even though the victim’s identity had little to do with the attack against them.
In this case, the mob assaulted the man on suspicion of thievery, not because he was a Muslim, as alleged by Ashok Swain, who tweeted misleading claims about the incident that was shared thousands of times on Twitter, threatening to imperil India’s communal harmony and stoking unfounded fears among Muslims.
Ghaziabad fake ‘hate crime’ to defame ‘Jai Shri Ram’ chants
The incident bears a stark resemblance to the Ghaziabad fake hate crime incident wherein a muted video of a Muslim man being roughed up had gone viral on the internet. Mohammed Zubair, Saba Naqvi, and many others shared the video claiming that the Muslim man was assaulted because of his refusal to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’. It was later revealed that the man was assaulted over promises made over an amulet sold to one of the assaulters.
Zubair later shared another video of Abdul along with Samajwadi Party leader Umed Pehelwan where Abdul claimed he was forced to chant ‘Jai Shri Ram’ by the mob and was beaten up. He had never mentioned the said ‘tabeez’ and subsequent reports by various propaganda outlets like The Wire have claimed that his family members deny any ‘tabeez’ claims.
These two videos activated the entire left lobby giving the incident a ‘communal colour’ after almost 10 days of the assault. Publications like The Wire, TheQuint, and Indian Express published reports on the basis of the victim’s statement in the Facebook live video, thereby, defaming the Hindu religious slogan ‘Jai Shri Ram.’
The video and the narrative soon went viral on social media, posing a threat to the law and order in the state.
On the very same day, Ghaziabad police uploaded a video apprising of the case giving relevant details and kept the social media users updated with the development thereon.
Taking cognizance of the matter, the Uttar Pradesh government filed an FIR on June 15 against Twitter for failing to flag the video with unverified claims as ‘manipulative’ and for lack of action.
Alt News co-founder Zubair, Rana Ayyub, The Wire, Salman Nizami, Maksoor Usmani, Sama Mohammad and Saba Naqvi have also been booked for spreading misleading and fake news.
SSP Amit Pathak in a press conference held on June 16 informed that some social media handles and media publications turned the entire incident of assault on an old man into a hate crime and deliberately tried to give it a communal colour.
Junaid Khan murder given a communal spin
Another incident where the left lobby bent over backwards to paint the country communal was in the Junaid Khan murder when the left-leaning liberals alleged that the man was lynched for being a Muslim.
The Punjab and Haryana High Court, however, later observed that there was no religious angle involved in Khan’s murder and that he was killed in a spat that erupted over a train seat.
