Tablighi Chief Donated Rs 1 Crore to PM’s Relief Fund? Fake Alert!
The page being shared has one article talking about the donation by Saad and seems to be a newspaper front page.
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CLAIM
A newspaper front page is going viral on social media with the claim that Tablighi Jamaat leader Maulana Saad had donated Rs 1 crore to “PM MODI Relief Fund” amid the coronavirus outbreak in India. The message with the photo also says that when Maulana Saad was asked why he did not make the news of his donation public, he said that Islam does not allow people to show off.
The page being shared has one article which talks about this donation by Maulana Saad and appears to be a front page of a newspaper, which seems to be called ‘News Letter’.
Many others shared the same post with the newspaper clipping on Facebook with similar captions.
The photo with this message was also viral on Twitter.
TRUE OR FALSE?
This is fake news and the newspaper page in circulation has been doctored to reflect the claim that Maulana Saad has donated Rs 1 crore to the fund. No such thing has actually happened.
WHAT WE FOUND
On looking at the newspaper page, we were able to see the words “The Pride of Northern Ireland” on the top. We also saw that the date on the page is 30 March.
Further, on searching for “Relief as abuse payout plan is one step closer” on Google, we came across a news article by a platform called News Letter titled “Victims’ relief as abuse compensation moves a step closer”.
We found that News Letter is a daily from Belfast, Northern Ireland, which had carried the story on 6 June 2019.
We also noticed that the logo of News Letter on the digital platform (a peacock), is the same as the one that can be seen on the viral newspaper page.
Then, we ran a Google search with the keywords “News Letter Belfast abuse compensation 6 June 2019”, we came across a news article by BBC, in which we found the actual page of the News Letter from 6 June 2019.
We saw that this page was the exact same as the one which is viral, with some exceptions. While the stories about the Judge, the CCTV footage and the abuse payout were the same, the actual page carried three stories about Tories, Olympic hero Greg and the Queen, which have been replaced in the viral page.
It becomes clear that the viral page has been doctored to replace the three mentioned stories with the main one about Maulana Saad and the two others about Spain and Azim Premji. It may be noted that the news about the donation from Azim Premji Foundation is true, as is the fact that coronavirus has created havoc in Spain.
However, there is no such news about Maulana Saad donating Rs 1 crore to the fund. It may also be noted that there is no such fund called “PM MODI Relief Fund” - the two funds related to coronavirus in existence in India are Prime Minister's National Relief Fund and PM CARES.
Therefore, it is clear a doctored page of an Irish newspaper from June 2019 is being circulated to claim that Saad has donated to a fund related to coronavirus.
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