A day after the Congress party’s link emerged in the massive BBMP-bed scam with the arrest of a Congress supporter, the Congress party hit a new low by sharing fake images to target the BJP leader and Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya.
On Tuesday, BJP MP Tejasvi Surya and BJP MLAs Satish Reddy, Ravi Subramanya, and Uday Garudachar had exposed the illegal bed-allotment nexus between civic officials and private agents. The BJP leaders had alleged that some officials in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had joined hands with the touts to book hospital beds in the name of people under home isolation while selling these beds to other patients in need at an exorbitant price.
Following the massive allegations, the Bengaluru police had arrested one Congress party supporter named Nethravathy and her nephew for their involvement in the illegal allotment of beds to Covid-19 patients in Bengaluru in exchange for money. The police had suspected that the accused had contacts with the BBMP war room staff.
The accused – Nethravathy and Rohith Kumar, hailing from Begur, had alleged nexus with civic officials and certain private hospitals, were caught after the police conducted a sting operation. A police team, posing as relatives of a Covid-19 patient, had approached them for beds. the accused used to circulate messages on WhatsApp offering help to Covid-19 patients to arrange beds. The police had said that the duo had established contacts in the BBMP war room from where they availed the allotment.
The duo would charge anywhere between Rs.20,000 and Rs.40,000 from the patients based on their financial status.
Congress party spreads fake news – shares morphed image to target Tejasvi Surya
As the Congress party faced massive embarrassment in the state after one of its party supporters was arrested by the Bengaluru police in connection with the BBMP-bed scam, the grand-old party has now resorted to peddling misinformation on social media by posting morphed images to allege that the accused is actually linked with the BJP. They tried to claim that the accused woman Nethravathy is linked with Tejasvi Surya, who in fact, was the first person to expose the nexus between private agents and BBMP officials in the allocation of beds to Covid-19 patients in the city.
Brazening it out on Wednesday, the Congress party took to Twitter to not only make abusive slurs against the young MP but also resorted to sharing fake images of him with the arrested Nethravathy to insinuate that the BJP has links with BBMP-bed scam accused Nethravathy.
Sharing a morphed image on Twitter, the official Twitter handle of Karnataka Congress said that the accused Nethravathy (encircled in the below image) was a BJP party worker.
However, in reality, the image shared by the Congress party is nothing but a badly photoshopped image. In reality, the woman who is seen next to Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya is a different person and not Congress party supporter Nethravathy.
In the below image shared by a social media user Sharath bs, one can see the real person standing next to Tejasvi Surya.
However, in an attempt to target BJP and the BJP MP, the Congress party seems to have scored a self-goal by indulging in lazy work of badly morphing an image to replace the real person with the scam accused Nethravathy.
Bed scam accused a supporter of the Congress party
Following the arrest of the accused in the BBMP bed scam, several reports had emerged stating that scam accused Congress supporter had participated in several rallies and events organised by the Congress party in the last few years. In addition to that, several images expose her close links with the state leadership of the Congress party.
Here are some of the images in which the accused Nethravathy can be seen participating in several rallies organised by the Congress party. There are several images that exposed her links with the Congress party.
In another image, Nethravathy was seen with KPCC working President Eashwar Khandre.
Congress party supporter Nethravathy can be seen holding banners that feature images of Gandhi-scions – Priyanka and Rahul Gandhi.
The alleged involvement of the Congress supporter in the BBMP-bed scam has now caused a massive political storm in the state.
BBMP-Bed Scam:
The massive scam came to light after Bengaluru South MP Tejasvi Surya, along with three other BJP MLAs – Satish Reddy, Ravi Subramanya, and Uday Garudachar had stormed into the BBMP war room in Bengaluru on Tuesday to expose the illegal bed-allotment nexus between civic officials and private agents.
The BJP MP had alleged that some officials in Bruhat Bengaluru Mahanagara Palike (BBMP) had joined hands with the touts to book hospital beds in the name of people under home isolation while selling these beds to other patients in need at an exorbitant price.
IMPORTANT Addressing issues of irregularities and anomalies in BBMP bed booking for covid patients in Bengaluru along with Bommanahalli MLA Shri. Satish Reddy, Basavanagudi MLA Shri. Ravi Subramanya and Chickpet MLA Shri. Uday Garudachar. https://t.co/mzjjiQq7AP
— Tejasvi Surya (@Tejasvi_Surya) May 4, 2021
Addressing the press conference, Surya had said that there are enough beds in Bengaluru city. However, the war room personnel had been running a racket of false blocking the beds. They were then allotting those beds to the people in exchange for money. He added that there was a nexus between BBMP officials, Aarogya Mitra hospitals and private agents who were indulging in the said crime.
Further, Surya had questioned the hiring process of 17 individuals and asked about the agency that they belonged to. Some of the names he enquired about while confronting BBMP officials are Mansoor Ali, Tahir Ali Khan, Sadiq Pasha, Md Zayed, Alsai Saheer, Umer Khan, Salman Urif, Zameer Pasha, Zabiullah Khan, Sayed Hasnain, Sayed Shahid, Sayeed Shahbaz, Md Yunus, Syed Mohin and Syed Mukesh.