Former Bengaluru police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao likely to join BJP, quitting AAP
Bengaluru, Feb 28: Former Bengaluru Police Commissioner Bhaskar Rao, who is the Chairman of Aam Aadmi Party's (AAP) Manifesto Committee, is likely to join the BJP ahead of the Assembly polls in Karnataka, sources close to him and the party said on Tuesday.
The former IPS officer today met state's Revenue Minister R Ashoka and held discussions.
He is also said to have met Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai, a former IPS officer and party's co-in-charge for Karnataka polls, and Union Minister Pralhad Joshi, sources said, adding that he will be joining the party soon.
Rao, who resigned from the IPS, had joined AAP in April last year, and was recently appointed as the party's Manifesto Committee's Chairman, and had emerged as one of the prominent faces of the party in the state.
Rao, who was even seen as AAP's probable candidate from the Basavanagudi Assembly constituency, is said to have quit the party due to his reported not so good equations with certain leaders especially in the state unit and its recent organisational changes, sources added.
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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.
