A video of protesters staging a mock funeral of Prime Minister Narendra Modi has gone viral on social media. It is being claimed that a mock funeral was held in Pakistan after the electoral victory of Congress in three states. The message circulated along with the video says, “हिंदू अब भी नहीं जागा तो तुम्हारा अन्त निश्चित है। (Hindus, if you don’t wake up now your end is certain -translated)”.
तीन राज्यों में कांग्रेस की जीत पर पाकिस्तान में मोदी जी कि शव यात्रा निकाली गई वो भी भद्दी भद्दी गालियों के साथ।
हिंदू अब भी नहीं जागा तो तुम्हारा अन्त निश्चित है।पाकिस्तान इतना खुश क्यों हुआ अपने आप से पूंछो।Posted by Pravin Jain Sanghvi on Sunday, 23 December 2018
In the video, people can be heard saying, “Modi is dead, cry, cry loudly, cry together….Khattar is dead -translated”. The cries for ‘Khattar’ refers to the chief minister of Haryana, Manohar Lal Khattar.
Twitter user, Gaurav Pradhan, who routinely shares misinformation, tweeted the same video with an identical claim. Pradhan is followed by Prime Minister Modi on Twitter
The same video tweeted by an individual user, Ramesh Agarwala has received close to 2300 retweets so far.
Several individuals on Facebook and Twitter have shared this video with an identical narrative.
Earlier, a supporter of the Congress party Gaurav Pandhi had tweeted the video claiming that the protest took place in Haryana.
Video from Tamil Nadu
We did a Google search with the keywords, “मोदी अर्थी (Modi’s funeral -translated)” and found a YouTube video but with different audio.
In this video, protestors can be heard speaking Tamil which points to the possibility of the viral Hindi version being a doctored video. According to a website, the images belong to a protest held against the ban on Jallikattu in 2017. In the collage below, the image on the left is a screen-grab from the YouTube video while the on the right is from the viral video circulating on social media.
A blog published on January 21, 2017 carried an image of the protest in Tamil Nadu. We found a video by Nakkheeran TV of the anti-Modi processions that were taken out by the protesters in a similar fashion to revoke the ban on Jallikattu.
An article published by The News Minute on January 20, 2017 reported on the protest directed at the Prime Minister. Furthermore, we couldn’t find a credible news report about a mock funeral procession of Prime Minister Narendra Modi which was held in Pakistan recently. This video was earlier fact-checked by Boom Live.
Audio from Haryana
The slogans chanted in the doctored version have a striking resemblance to the ones chanted during the protest held by Multi-purpose health workers against the Haryana government. At 0:29 mins in the video, slogans chanted against the Haryana chief minister Manohar Lal Khattar can be heard.
Alt News couldn’t conclusively establish the veracity of the audio in the video clip shared on social media.
In conclusion, the sound in this video was manipulated and the video was falsely claimed as a rally in Pakistan after Congress’ victory in the recent assembly elections. There appears to be a concerted effort by the fake news machinery to spread misinformation linking Congress with Pakistan. In the run up to the election, it was claimed that Pakistani flags were waved and Pakistan Zindabad slogans shouted at Congress rallies.
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