FIR filed over hacking of Vartha Bharati’s email ID, YouTube Channel
Bengaluru, Nov 14: An FIR has been lodged at the Bengaluru Cyber Crime Police Station following a hacking incident involving the email and YouTube channel of the media outlet Vartha Bharati. The FIR was registered on Thursday based on a complaint from Vartha Bharati.
The hacking was discovered on Thursday morning, revealing that cybercriminals had gained unauthorized access to the official email and subsequently the YouTube channel, youtube.com/varthabharatinews. As a result, Vartha Bharati was unable to broadcast any programs on the platform, raising concerns that the hackers could potentially misuse the channel to disseminate anti-social messages or content. In its complaint, Vartha Bharati requested action to secure the release of the hacked accounts and prevent any misuse.
By Thursday afternoon, YouTube had restored Vartha Bharati's channel to a secondary official email account, allowing the organization to resume its broadcasts. However, the primary hacked email remains inaccessible, and investigations are ongoing to resolve the issue.
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Fact Check: viral claim of Bashar al-Assad visit to his aunt’s home in Moscow is false
Claim: The video shows Bashar al-Assad visiting his aunt’s home in Moscow in 2024.
Fact: The claim is false. The video is from 2017 and shows Assad visiting wounded soldiers.
Hyderabad: On December 20, 2024, thousands of Syrians gathered in Damascus’s Umayyad Square, celebrating the establishment of a new government with fireworks and displays of a new flag. The event followed the return of many Syrians to the country after the fall of Bashar al-Assad’s regime.
Amid these celebrations, a video went viral, claiming to show Assad visiting his aunt’s home in Moscow. The video, shared by an X user, was accompanied by the caption: “Bashar al-Assad visits his aunt in her humble home in Moscow, the Republic of Russia, where he took refuge” (translated from Arabic). (Archive)
The 1:30-minute video shows Assad, along with his family, visiting a house and being warmly received by a lady and others in the household.
Similar claims can be seen here and here. (Archive 1, Archive 2)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The video is not recent nor show Assad visiting his aunt.
A reverse image search led us to the same footage posted on YouTube by the Syrian Presidency channel on September 16, 2018, under the title ‘The hero, Ayham Mahmoud Donia, after his injury, received President al-Assad and his family himself, walking on his feet’.
This hinted that the video is old and unrelated to recent events.
Further, a keyword search led to a report from Al Yawm Al Saabie on June 26, 2017, which described Assad and his family visiting wounded soldiers in the Hama countryside.
The report included the same video, with the description stating that the woman in the footage is the mother of a wounded Syrian soldier.
The report explained that one of the soldiers, Ayham Mahmoud Donia, had been severely injured but defied expectations by walking again to greet Assad. This visit was part of the regime’s ‘Wounded of the Nation Program,’ aimed at supporting soldiers wounded in the conflict.
Therefore, the claim that the video shows Assad visiting his aunt in Moscow is false. The footage is from a 2017 visit where Assad met injured soldiers in Syria.
(This story was originally published by newsmeter, and republished by english.varthabharati.in as part of the Shakti Collective)
