Sidhu thanks 'friend' Imran for Kartarpur corridor announcement
Chandigarh, Sep 7: Defending his earlier stand on the opening of Kartarpur corridor by Pakistan, Punjab Cabinet Minister Navjot Singh Sidhu on Friday thanked his "friend" Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan for enabling the opening of the religious corridor.
The Kartarpur corridor will allow pilgrims from India to go to a gurdwara in Pakistan, close to the India-Pakistan border, which is associated with Sikhism founder Guru Nanak Dev.
"Ajj meri zindagi safal ho gayi (Today, I have succeeded in life)," a visibly charged Sidhu told the media here on Friday, claiming that PM Imran Khan had lived up to his promise of opening the religiously crucial corridor.
Sidhu even claimed that the Pakistan government had invited the government of India for talks on the Kartarpur corridor issue.
"See what my friend has done. I thank you Khan Saab (Imran Khan) a million times for doing this," Sidhu said, adding that things happened with the blessings of Guru Nanak.
Sidhu took a dig at those, meaning the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which criticized him for his statements earlier on the issue and the hug that he gave to Pakistan Army chief General Qamar Javed Bajwa during the swearing-in ceremony of Imran Khan as Pakistan's Prime Minister in Islamabad last month.
Cricketer-turned-politician was under fire from the BJP leadership for his hug with General Bajwa.
Sidhu said that the Pakistan government has stated that Indian pilgrims will be allowed to visit the Sikh shrine through the Kartarpur corridor without visa.
It was at the Kartarpur gurdwara, which is located around four km from the India-Pakistan international border and right opposite the border belt in Dera Baba Nanak in India's Punjab's Gurdaspur district, that Guru Nanak Dev spent 18 years of his life till he died in 1539.
The gurdwara, which fell in the Pakistan territory following the partition of India in August 1947, has big significance for Sikh religion and history.
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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.
