A video of Nationalist Congress Party (NCP) leader Sharad Pawar is going viral with the claim that he was slapped by somebody over his response to cricketer Sachin Tendulkar’s ‘India together’ tweet.
However, we found that the video is from 2011 when Pawar, who was the then Union agriculture minister, was slapped by a person identified as Harvinder Singh.
CLAIM
The claim shared along with the video reads that Pawar was slapped by someone for speaking against Tendulkar.
The video saw widespread presence on Facebook and Twitter with the same narrative.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We noticed the logo of NDTV in the viral video and searched on YouTube with keywords ‘NDTV Sharad Pawar slapped’.
This led us to a 2011 bulletin uploaded by the news channel with the caption: ‘Sharad Pawar slapped by youth in Delhi.’
One can see the viral visuals at 0:51 seconds in the YouTube video uploaded on 24 November 2011.
The description of the YouTube video mentioned that a youth had slapped the then Union Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar at the New Delhi Municipal Corporation centre.
“The (then) minister was attacked as he was leaving the premises after attending a literary function. The attacker, identified as Harvinder Singh, was reportedly angry over the minister’s inability to control price rise,” the description stated.
Several organisations such as News18 Lokmat, Aaj Tak had uploaded the visuals back in 2011.
In 2019, the Delhi Police arrested the attacker, another NDTV report mentioned. A Delhi Court had declared Singh as a Proclaimed Offender “after he went missing during the course of trial.”
Evidently, an old incident of NCP leader Sharad Pawar being slapped was revived to falsely claim that it’s a recent one.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us 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.)