With the protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act gaining momentum across the country, multiple fake claims targeting the protests and police have surfaced on the internet.
CLAIM
In one such claim, BJP’s National General Secretary, BL Santhosh, shared the screenshot of a tweet by NEWS9, an English news channel based out of Karnataka. The tweet mentioned that Mangaluru cops had arrested around 50 fake journalists who had come from Kerala. It further mentioned that the journalists were found to be possessing lethal weapons.
The BJP functionary shared the screenshot of the tweet with a caption which read, “ Still you have any doubts about the intention & plans ...!?(sic)”
Multiple other users tweeted a similar claim.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The Quint could confirm that the claim is absolutely misleading. We reached out to Mangaluru police officials who told us that eight Malayali media persons were detained by the police. They also informed us that the reason behind the detention of the journalists was that they were not carrying accreditation cards.
We could independently verify that the journalists who had come to Karnataka were detained where they were covering the post-mortem of the two protesters who died in the Mangaluru police firing.
Speaking to AsiaNet News, one of the detained journalist Mujeeb Rahman said, “Kannada journalists were quoting Mangalore Police. We think Mangalore Police fabricated this story and fed it to the media.”
The two protesters were killed in police firing during protests in Karnataka. The victims, Jaleel (49) and Nauseen (23) had suffered bullet injuries when the police opened fire to quell the violent protests against recent amendment in Citizenship Act.
According to a report by The News Minute, “The media persons from four prominent Malayalam news outlets — Asianet News, News 18, MediaOne and TwentyFour News — were taken to the Karnataka-Kerala border and handed over to the Kerala police.
Kerala Chief Minister Pinarayi Vijayan was one of several other leaders who condemned the detention by the police.
So, there is no truth to the claim that 50 fake journalists carrying lethal weapons and cameras were arrested by Karnataka cops.
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