Congress tweets Gandhi's Kailash yatra picture, walking record
New Delhi, Sep 7: The Congress on Friday tweeted a picture of party chief Rahul Gandhi with Mount Kailash in the backdrop, along with his walking record, amid questions over the authenticity of some of his photographs from the Kailash-Mansarovar pilgrimage.
"Leaving all the haters behind, Congress President Gandhi sets the pace during his Kailash Yatra. Can you keep up?" the Congress said on its official Twitter handle.
The tweet carried a picture of Gandhi and his walking record that showed he had covered 34.31 km in 463 minutes and ascended a height equal to 203 floors in a day.
Gandhi, who left Delhi on August 31, has been tweeting pictures and videos from his yatra.
In his tweets, Gandhi has been referring to the tranquillity and calmness of places along the journey.
On Friday, he tweeted a video of snow capped mountains, saying "Shiva is the universe."
Gandhi had tweeted the "stunning beauty" of lake Rakshas Tal on Wednesday and the Mansarovar lake on Tuesday. He had said it was so humbling to be walking in the shadow of this giant (Mount Kailash).
BJP leader and Union Minister for Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises Giriraj Singh on Friday questioned the authenticity of a photograph from Gandhi's yatra.
"This is photoshop... the shadow of the stick is missing," he said in a tweet, attaching Gandhi's picture wherein he is seen standing with a fellow pilgrim with a stick in hand.
Priti Gandhi, incharge of BJP Mahila Morcha social media cell, had on Wednesday also raised questions over a photograph.
"Rahul Gandhi, are you downloading pictures from the Internet and tweeting? Are you really at Mansarovar, or some place else?" she said while referring to a picture shared by Gandhi on the social media.
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Gurugram Police arrest BJP Yuva Morcha member for spreading fake murder story on social media
New Delhi: Gurugram Police have arrested BJP Yuva Morcha member Hariom Mishra, for allegedly spreading a fabricated and communally sensitive story on social media about the murder of a college student in Gurugram.
Mishra who is also known as Shaurya Mishra had shared a collage of four photographs on his X handle earlier this month. He claimed that a 24-year-old college student, identified as Nikita Agarwal, had been murdered by her classmate Arif Khan in Gurugram. In the post, he alleged that the woman was blackmailed, forced into prostitution, gangraped, and eventually killed. He also claimed that Arif dumped her body in a forest. The claims were presented as being based on police sources.
The post went viral and garnering over 1.5 lakh views, and was amplified by several right-wing social media handles across X, Facebook and Instagram. A verification of the claims revealed that no such incident had taken place in Gurugram. A search of credible news reports showed no record of any such murder. The police said this news would have inevitably attracted media attention if it were true.
On December 11, Gurugram Police publicly refuted the claims through their official X handle. They stated that the information which was being circulated was completely false. The police warned that legal action would be taken against those spreading misinformation. Despite the warning, Mishra neither deleted the post nor issued any clarification.
Police in Gurugram confirmed Mishra's arrest on December 16. The police said a FIR was filed after he continued to spread false information about the alleged murder of a Hindu woman by Muslim man. Police said Mishra, a resident of Uttar Pradesh's Kaushambi district, is now being investigated.
Gurugram Police spokesperson Sandeep Singh told The Print that the accused had deliberately misrepresented facts and used objectionable content to spread hatred along religious lines. “Such posts can create serious disturbances in society, and the police take these matters very seriously,” he said.
A reverse image search conducted by fact-checkers at Alt News, revealed that the photographs used in the viral post were unrelated to the claims, while two of the images were traced to a Pinterest account belonging to influencer Maulik Chopra and another image was sourced from an Instagram post by influencer Shivam Thakur featuring a woman named Deepanshi Rawat. The fourth image was found on an unrelated Instagram page. The images depicted different individuals and had no connection to any crime.
Police said they are also investigating Mishra’s motive behind sharing the false and provocative content.
