Video of a martyr’s family mourning his death shared with false, malicious communal angle - Alt News
Jignesh Patel
3rd January 2019 / 5:08 pm
“आ गई कांग्रेस सरकार हो गया बलात्कार शुरू ए विडीयो राजस्थान का हे एक हिन्दू लडकी को मारा ओर घर मे लेजाकर बलात्कार किया वहा कि पूलीस भी कूछ नही कर रही क्यू कि ये जो लड़के हे जो मुस्लिम है वहा मुस्लिम आबादी जादा हे आज इसके साथ हूवा हे कल आप के साथ भी होगा इसकी मदत करो हाथ जोडता हू इस जगह अपनी बहन बहन समझकर इसको इतना फेलाओ कि मीडीया और बेटी बचावो नारा देनेवाले तक पहुचा दो इंसानियत के वासते जितनेभी ग्रुप है उसमे छोड़ते रहो रुकना नही चाहिए”, read the caption affixed to a video of a woman crying hysterically circulating on social media.
According to the post, she along with others are mourning the death of a Hindu woman who was raped and later killed in Rajasthan. It has been claimed that this incident happened after Congress was voted to power in the state. The message circulating along with the video claims that local police is not initiating action against the perpetrators as they belong to the Muslim community and the incident occurred in a Muslim-majority area.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7gkEgh7BInY
Several individual Facebook and YouTube users have posted this video with the identical narrative.
Alt News broke the video into multiple key-frames using Invid, a chrome extension, which were then used to perform a reverse image search on Google. Reverse searching the images, we found that the people seen in the video were mourning the martyrdom of late constable Hansraj Gurjar of the BSF. Gurjar was killed in firing along the International Border in the Chamliyal post area of Samba district in Jammu and Kashmir.
A photo-story published by News 18 had captioned the picture of the devastated woman as Manju Devi, the wife of the martyr. It reported that a huge crowd had gathered in the ancestral village of Mugalpur, Rajasthan to give a final salute to the martyr’s body and that the health condition of Manju had worsened.
An article published by The Hindustan Times on June 14, 2018 reported that Gurjar’s 15-day-old son had to lit his pyre as his wife was inconsolable. “Hans Raj was supposed to come to his village June 14 to participate in Kuala Pujan ceremony of his infant son on June 15. Even after receiving the news of his son’s death, a 70-year-old Rameshwar Gurjar said that he will send his grandson to the army,” stated the report. We also found a video posted on YouTube in June 2018, titled, “Hansraj Gurjar Bansur, भारत माँ की जय, जय हिंद जय भारत”. SMHoaxslayer had earlier fact-checked this claim.
A six-month-old video of a family mourning at the tragic loss of a martyr was falsely passed off as mourning over the death of a Hindu girl raped by perpetrators belonging to the Muslim community. In the last one year, misinformation has been weaponised and used to target minorities in India. (Read this compilation by Alt News). Another popular narrative on social media is of Hindus under threat after Congress assumed power in the three Hindi-heartland states in the recently held assembly elections.
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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