CLAIM
A poem is being shared widely with the claim that it was penned by late lawyer Ram Jethmalani, who passed away on Sunday, 8 September. The message, which began being circulated post his death, says that it is a “Lovely poem by Ram Jethmalani, who died at 95”.
The poem has also gone viral with the same claim on Twitter and Facebook.
Here is the full poem.
HOW TRUE IS IT?
This poem is not actually by Ram Jethmalani. It has been penned by an author by the name of Rashmi Trivedi.
WHAT WE FOUND
On running a search with the first few lines of the poem, we came across a result from The Siasat Daily, an Indian Urdu-language newspaper, which attributed the poem to Rashmi Trivedi. The poem on their website, titled “My dying conscience” was dated 1 December 2017.
The poem comes from a book titled “Handful of sunshine, pocketful of rain” which is a collection of Trivedi’s poetry.
On running a search with the title and ‘Rashmi Trivedi’, The Quint found the original Facebook post by the author, where she had uploaded the entire poem.
Trivedi had uploaded the poem on Facebook on 2 December 2017, ostensibly indicating that she had penned it herself, which proves that the poem cannot have been penned by Jethmalani. The author has also uploaded her other poems on her profile. Therefore, the claim doing the rounds with this poem is fake.
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