The image being circulated online has been used as earlier well, even resulting in a Congress leader being booked in 2015.
New Delhi: An image of policemen beating Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) workers with lathis is being shared widely on social media, claiming that the workers were robbing Kerala flood victims.
A Facebook page named Priyanka Gandhi – Future of India shared the image. The text on the image said, “The police is beating the RSS workers who were stealing the belonging of the Kerala flood victims.”
The image also bore #RGforPM hashtag over it.
Kerala is recovering from its worst floods in nearly a century. Reports of people stealing relief material have come up.
However, the image being circulated online is from Agra in 2012 when the Uttar Pradesh police had to resort to a lathicharge on RSS workers who had gathered for a bicycle rally and allegedly hit a leader’s car.
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It’s not the first instance that this image has been shared with a misleading caption.
In December 2015, then UP Congress chief Nirmal Khatri was even booked under IPC section 469 (forgery intended to harm someone’s reputation) and section 66-D of the IT Act, for sharing the same image saying the police was beating RSS workers robbing flood victims in Chennai.
At the time, Bharatiya Janata Party MLA Yogendra Upadhyaya had alleged that the same image was shared by Madhya Pradesh Youth Congress captioned, “RSS worker being beaten up by police for harassing a girl.”
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