Soon, Narendra Modi will wrap up his three-day official visit to the US, during which he held bilateral discussions with President Joe Biden on their expanding ties. These discussions were followed by a joint press conference and a state banquet at the White House.
The official state visit was nothing short of a healthy, eventful, spectacular, resourceful, productive and an announcement of India’s here to stay role at the World stage for a long period of time to come.
Amidst the historic visit, the Modi critics in India are running a toolkit to make a mockery out of his visit. From President Biden not welcoming him at the airport, comparing his visit with the former Prime Minister Nehru’s visit to the USA to rejoicing when the PM stumbled while speaking, liberals and propagandists are hunting for new propaganda to portray PM’s failure on a global scale.
Adhering to the toolkit, the verified Twitter user Hitendra Pithadiya, who is the chairman of the Indian National Congress (INC) Gujarat according to his bio, tweeted a video with a caption “Do you still think that an Indian PM got grand reception in the US?”
In the video that was tweeted by the INC Gujarat Chairman, it is shown that there was an anti-Modi protest where the statue of the PM was garlanded by shoes and protestors were holding signs that read, “Kashmir is bleeding.” Hitendra Pithadiya claimed that the video is from the USA and the protest is happening due to the Modi’s visit.
Besides, the actor turned BRS politician, Prakash Raj, quoting the Hitendra’s video wrote, “Dear Bhakts do you believe.”
Not only that, the viral video was also shared by the Twitter users @/SStraightForwar, @/_QueenRaGa and @/Team_Herox1.
Also Read: Debunking Fake Claims Made by Sujata Anandan, Consulting Editor of National Herald, against PM Modi
Fact Check
In the first step of our research we did relevant keyword search related to the video but could not find any article. After the keyword search did not yield any result, we performed reverse image search by extracting the keyframes from the video.
With the help of reverse image search, we found that in 2019, a few social media users had shared the video of anti-Modi protest. A Facebook user going by the handle name Dr. Sunsila Jebrin Priyanka sharing the same video wrote, “In foreign fields, Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s effigy was protested by garlanding shoes. Inshallah Babri Masjid will remain, but Modi will not.”
Further, according to the YouTube shorts of anti-Modi protest posted on December 18, 2019 by the user @/news7dayschannel389 the protest took place in Russia where the statue of Modi was made to wear the garland of shoes.
Another Twitter user noted that the anti-Modi protest occurred in America in a tweet dated 2021 that included an image from the protest site.
With these points, it is evident that the anti-Modi protest video is not from recent but rather three-four years old. The protest’s exact location cannot be determined from these social media posts, though because different location are mentioned in these posts.
Furthermore, to be certain of the location of the protest, we carefully examined the video to look for any hint which could reveal the location of the anti-Modi protest. We saw “E 47 St” in the video and took that as a clue.
Next, when we searched “E 47 st” on Google Map, we discovered that the protest took place in New York, United States, which has a street called East 47th. We rotated the street on the map 360 degrees and discovered the same board with the letters “E 47 st” written in green and the signboard of letter E in yellow. Also the surrounding area of the street has same skyscraper buildings as shown in the old video.
After finding out the location of the anti-Modi protest, we did the keyword search “anti-Modi protest in New York” and came across a few articles related to the New York protest against Modi in 2019.
In September 2019, PM Modi visited the US for two important events. He talked to the UN General Assembly on September 27 in New York after attending the Howdy Modi event on September 22 in Houston, Texas. The protest led to the events of protests.
According to an article by medium.com, on September 27, a protest was planned on East 47th Street between UN Plaza and 2nd Avenue in New York against Narendra Modi’s government and to demand an end to the occupation of Kashmir. Hence, the pamphlet of “Kashmir is bleeding” was seen in video.
Hence, from the aforementioned points, it can be concluded that the anti-Modi protest video is old, dating from 2019, and that it has been intentionally misattributed to the PM’s recent visit to the US.
| Claim | The anti-Modi protest video showing Modi’s statue garlanded with shoes is from recent |
| Claimed by | Hitendra Pithadiya, Prakash Raj and several Twitter users |
| Fact Check | Misleading |
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