“कभी देखा है ऐसा प्रधानमंत्री जो खुद शहीद की पत्नी को फोन करे, एक बाप की तरह उनके आँसू पोंछने की कोशिश करे, देख कर आँखे नम हो जाएँगी (Have you ever seen a Prime Minister, who himself calls the martyr’s wife and tries to console her like a father. This video will bring tears to your eyes -translated)” reads the caption of a video, where a woman is supposedly speaking to Prime Minister Narendra Modi over a phone call. The video has gone viral on social media in the backdrop of the Pulwama terror attack. A post by a Facebook page Swadeshi Lehar has been shared close to 2800 times so far.
Many other individual users on Facebook and Twitter have shared the video with an identical narrative.
Old video, not the wife of army martyr
Alt News found that the video is more than five years old and dates back to the time when Narendra Modi was the Chief Minister of Gujarat. We found a video, uploaded by Zee News‘ official YouTube channel on November 2, 2013. “Narendra Modi called on the wife of Patna blast victim from Gopal Ganj, Munna Shrivastav, to offer his condolences. He was unable to visit the village due to bad weather.”, reads the caption attested with the video. Narendra Modi’s website had also published a post along with the same video, now circulating on social media, on November 2, 2013.
The woman, whom Modi was consoling over a telephonic conversation, seen in the video is Munna Srivastava’s wife, Priya Srivastava. Munna Srivastava was one of five people who were killed in a serial blast that reportedly took place before BJP’s Hunkar rally in October, 2013. An article published by The Indian Express on October 28, 2013, stated, “In the first such attack in Patna, five people were killed and over 70 injured when serial blasts targeted Narendra Modi’s rally in the state capital’s Gandhi Maidan.” As the weather conditions were unfavourable for Modi’s chopper to land in Srivastava’s town, he was unable to visit the family.
In conclusion, an old video of a woman, whose husband had died in a serial blasts in Patna in 2013 was circulated widely as PM Modi consoling the wife of a martyr, in the backdrop of the recent terror attack on CRPF personnel in Jammu and Kashmir.
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