Fake Tweet Used to Claim Shehla Rashid Asked to Boycott Shikara

Speaking to The Quint, Shehla Rashid said that the tweet is fake and that she has not made any such appeal.

A screenshot of a tweet attributed to former JNU student leader Shehla Rashid calling for boycotting the film ‘Shikara’ has been widely shared.

Vidhu Vinod Chopra’s ‘Shikara’ has been described as a “love letter from Kashmir” and is set against the backdrop of the mass exodus of Kashmiri Pandits who were forced to leave the Kashmir Valley in 1990.

As per the screenshot, Shehla quoted journalist Aditya Raj Kaul’s tweet on the film ‘Shikara’, and wrote “Please boycott this anti Kashmiri Muslim movie Shikara. There is no need to bring up the past..What bygone is bygone (sic).”

Journalist Aditya Raj Kaul had shared the tweet seen in the viral screenshots on Tuesday, 7 January at 1:43 pm. We tracked Shehla’s Twitter handle till this time stamp and did not find any tweet that had the text as that of the viral screenshots.

In tears. I am unable to move. For the first time someone has had the courage to narrate my story of forced exodus by Islamist terrorists in Kashmir without monkey balancing. Thank you @rahulpandita for writing this for us all. Thank you @VVCFilms for sharing this brutal truth. pic.twitter.com/o3XPA3bR2f

— Aditya Raj Kaul (@AdityaRajKaul) January 7, 2020

On comparing the viral screenshots with the tweets that she has actually shared, we found that they do not corroborate with the Twitter format.

For instance, in the viral screenshot, the gap between Shehla’s name and her Twitter handle is more than that seen in the actually tweet shared by her (highlighted in blue on the right).

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Further, we found that the same text attributed to Shehla was being circulated as reply to one Rohit Arya’s post as well.

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Rohit’s post is not even a tweet. There is no sign of a Twitter handle, and the globe seen next to the time stamp is used on Facebook to see who can view the post.

Shehla cannot possibly reply to a Facebook post using her Twitter account. We found Rohit Arya’s post on Facebook with the same text.

Speaking to The Quint, Shehla Rashid said that the screenshot in circulation is “fake” and that she has not tweeted any such thing.

“This is very obviously fake, and I’m really distressed by this. Also, I’d like to add that I don’t endorse such calls to boycott movies. I haven’t even heard about this movie. Why would I call for the boycott?”

Shehla Rashid, former JNU student leader

Evidently, a morphed tweet attributed to Shehla Rashid was used to claim that she called for boycotting the film ‘Shikara’.