SHILLONG: Governor Tathagata Roy, who is on leave, has come under attack from trolls for sharing an alleged old video on Twitter which was shot in Rajasthan, but which he has claimed to be in Pakistan.
The video shows a Hindu woman being picked up by a Muslim in front of his mother and child.
The governor shared the 1:50-second video by tweeting, “A Hindu woman is being picked up by a Muslim in Pakistan in the front of his mother and child. And foolish Hindus are proud of the NRC opposition. There are 55 Islamic countries for 150 million Muslims, there are 69 Christian countries for 250 million Christians. And there is no country for 150 crore Hindus.”
Alt News had, however, earlier debunked the same video in December 2019 when it was shared claiming that the poor woman was lifted in public and raped by men in Rajasthan. The video is at least two years old and is from Rajasthan’s Jodhpur district.
As per the media report, one of the men in the video is the husband of the girl they try to abduct. The elderly woman is the mother of the girl. According to a September 27, 2017 newspaper report the husband’s name is Shaukat who was married to Nemat and Aamad Khan’s daughter.
“As per the police, Aamad Khan, a resident of Kalu Khan ki Dhani village, had married his daughter to Shaukat at a very young age several years back. Shaukat had asked his in-laws several times to send his wife. However, Shaukat’s mother-in-law Nemat insisted on doing the Gauna (ceremony) when her daughter turns 18”, states the report. Shaukat, along with an accomplice Ilyas, came with a tractor and forcefully took his minor wife after beating his resistant mother-in-law.
The report stated that according to the local police, these men were arrested and charged with “several sections of kidnapping, wrongful restraint and using criminal force on a woman with an intent to outrage her modesty”. However, they were later released on bail while the minor girl was living in the same village with her mother.
Soon after the video was shared by the Governor, Twitterati slammed the governor for sharing an old video.
While some termed Roy as fake news spreader, others asked him to check the facts before sharing fake videos.
However, the Governor refused to budge from his stand by sharing another tweet which read, “Some so-called fact-checking websites are traipsing all over social media. The ‘checking’ and the resultant dishing out of information that they do is false, biased and motivated. One might as well fact-check with ISI Rawalpindi.”
