Old, unrelated video of woman dancing shared as that of Congress worker Shilpi Singh - Alt News
Jignesh Patel
17th January 2019 / 8:34 pm
“यह महिला कांग्रेस की बड़ी नेता शिल्पी सिंह हैं” (This woman is a tall Congress leader named Shilpi Singh. -translated), reads a caption prefixed to a video of a woman who can be seen dancing with a glass placed above her head. According to the caption posted by Shubh Pandit, the woman seen in the video is a Madhya Pradesh Congress IT cell vice-president Shilpi Singh. It has been viewed close to 20,000 times. Pandit describes himself as a supporter of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and UP CM Yogi Adityanath.
Several other individuals on Facebook have shared this video with the identical narrative.
Alt News broke the video into multiple key-frames using Invid, a chrome extension and did a Google reverse image of a key-frame. We found one of the earliest instances when the video was shared online. The video captioned –“Nasha sharab me hota to nachti botal” was uploaded on YouTube on July 2, 2017.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eHZ-Ktxhwhw
Furthermore, juxtaposing the image of the woman in the video with that of Shilpi Singh’s photo depicts a clear distinction between the two. They are NOT the same; the woman in the video is not Congress worker Shilpi Singh.
Shilpi Singh also tweeted that the woman in the video is NOT her.
नीचता , बेशर्मी और बेहूदापन भाजपा के नेताओ से लेकर कार्यकर्ता तक मे भरा हुआ है। जहां मोदी से लेकर स्मृति ईरानी तक महिलाओं का अपमान करते हैं तो वही बीजेपी की महिला विंग की नेता #कविता_उपाध्याय मेरे सम्बन्ध में फर्जी वीडीयो डालकर मुझे गालियां दी रही है , क्या यही भाजपा की सोच है. pic.twitter.com/w6Bx6iZcS8
— Shilpi Singh (@ShilpiSinghINC) January 15, 2019
The video was viral in Pakistan as well, in 2017. It was claimed that the man seen in the video is a local Pakistani minister Jam Khan Shoro. An article published by a Pakistan website, The Sindh Times concluded that the video is from India and the man is NOT the local minister. Alt News couldn’t conclusively establish the origin of the video but it is certain that the video has been circulating on social media for the last two years.
In conclusion, the video shared as that of Congress IT cell vice-president Shilpi Singh is of an unrelated incident which is at least 18 months old. A woman who seems to be enjoying herself in a social gathering was made out to be female politician. This is a standard technique employed by purveyors of misinformation – shame a woman for having a ‘good time’, especially if she enjoys a position of power. This defiling panders to the conservative sections of a society that looks down upon women ‘having fun’. A similar vilification campaign was launched against Gurmehar Kaur when a video of a girl dancing in a moving car was circulated as hers.
Jignesh is a writer and researcher at Alt News. He has a knack for visual investigation with a major interest in fact-checking videos and images. He has completed his Masters in Journalism from Gujarat University.
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