‘Activist’ Shabnam Hashmi on Friday was caught spreading fake news again, this time about the farmer protest. On Friday, she tweeted a video wherein she claimed an “RSS guy” was caught distributing Khalistani pamphlets to ‘defame Kisan andolan’.
This tweet has been retweeted 262 times and has been liked 253 times. Shabnam Hashmi is followed by other leftist ‘journalists’ and ‘activists’ like The Caravan Editor Hartosh Singh Bal, protestor Kavita Krishnan, Radio Mirchi RJ Sayema, The Wire employee Arfa Khanum Sherwani and India Today’s Rahul Kanwal amongst others. ‘Fact-checker’ Pratik Sinha, too, follows her. None of them bothered to correct her.
However, the truth is that while the man was indeed present at the current Punjab farmer ‘protest’, he was not distributing Khalistan posters as peddled by Hashmi. Vikas Kumar Mandal, the man in the viral video, was there spreading pro-farm laws as well as pro-RSS material.
In fact, some of the posters that were found on him were this:
Multiple Twitter users pointed it out to her that the claims she is making regarding the video are untrue, but even after 24 hours, she has kept the misleading video online.
Hashmi, has earlier been also caught spreading fake news multiple times. Most prominent amongst them was the time she claimed how in November 2016, BJP in Gujarat lost ‘all 36 seats’ to Congress in Unjha Nagarpalika elections.
The ‘elections’ Hashmi talked about actually took place in December 2015. Secondly, BJP had not fielded any candidates, while Congress had fielded 5. Both parties though maintained they had put up “independents”. Eventually 35 of the total 36 elected members in the civic body were Independents, while Congress managed to win one seat. Again, it is numerically impossible for Congress to win all 36 seats as claimed by Hashmi, when they officially fielded only 5 candidates.
In fact, she regularly shares stuff she receives on WhatsApp and leaves it to others to ‘check’, instead of verifying it before sharing herself.
@aajtak I got this on whatsapp of its true then you have a lot to answer. pic.twitter.com/djGPNu8an4
— Shabnam Hashmi (@ShabnamHashmi) July 27, 2017
Shabnam Hashmi is sister of SFI activist Safdar Hashmi who was killed in 1989 by Congress leaders when he was performing a street play Halla Bol.