Old Photos of Abused Adivasi Woman Falsely Shared as Cong Atrocity
The post claims that a ‘Hindu woman’ was stripped by Congress workers for raising slogans in support of the BJP.
advertisement
An old image of an Adivasi woman being beaten by a few men on the streets has made a comeback. This time, a Facebook page - Hindu Akhilesh Gupta - shared these pictures, changing the context entirely and claiming that the woman was beaten by Congress workers in Bengal for raising pro-Modi slogans during a Congress rally.
At the time of publishing the article, the post had over 15,000 shares and 900 likes.
The Pictures Were Shared a Year Ago As Well
The same pictures were shared by a Yogi Adiyanath fan-page on Facebook, which has over 95,000 followers, with a similar narrative in 2017.
The post claimed that the ‘Hindu woman’ was stripped by Congress workers for allegedly raising slogans in support of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The post also called for people to share the post and “expose the true face of Congress” to the world. After the post was widely shared, protests broke out in Assam among the Adivasi community, to which the woman belongs, for the communal tinge given to the image and the fact that the woman’s face wasn’t hidden, as Hindustan Times reported.
People burnt effigies of the Uttar Pradesh chief minister and of RP Sharma, the BJP MP from Tezpur who shared the images on his own Facebook page.
But was the woman actually stripped and abused by Congress workers?
The Origin of the Photo
The photo was clicked in 2007 in Assam, reported SMHoaxSlayer.
This photo, used by social media groups supporting BJP, also claimed that TMC workers abused the woman.
Identified as Laxmi Orang, the woman who belongs to the Adivasi community, was stripped naked by ethnic rioters in Guwahati.
Orang was a part of thousands of protesters who took to streets, most of whom were Assam’s tea labourers.
An Election Ticket
16-months after she was abused, Laxmi Orang was nominated by the regional Assam United Democratic Front (AUDF), reported BBC.
However, her candidature was rejected by the Election Commission, as she was underage to contest in Lok Sabha elections.
Post the attack, Orang has emerged a voice for the tea tribes in their movement for equal rights.
Orang lodged an FIR on Sunday at the Moranhat police station in Charaideo district against Adityanath, but a case is yet to be registered.
(This article was published in 2017 and has been updated with details of a new page sharing the old pictures.)
(With inputs from SMHoaxSlayer)
(Not convinced of a story you came across on social media and want it verified? Send us the details at WebQoof@TheQuint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)
(At The Quint, we question everything. Play an active role in shaping our journalism by becoming a member today.)