'Four images have been shared hundreds of times in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts alongside a claim that they show a Muslim restaurant owner in the Indian city of Coimbatore mixing impotency pills in biryani before serving it to non-Muslim customers. The claim is false; the photos were taken from online sources unrelated to the restaurant; police in Coimbatore said there was “no truth” in the claim...'
'Six hours after the Information and Broadcasting Ministry issued a 48-hour ban on Asianet News over their coverage of the Delhi riots, the Malayalam news channel is back on air. On Friday, Asianet and MediaOne were barred for 48 hours by the ministry which alleged that their coverage of the recent Delhi riots had been biased, critical of the Delhi police and could have incited violence. While Asianet News is back on air, MediaOne has not resumed transmission.
'On March 6, 2020 several right-wing Twitter users in India tweeted screenshots of a tweet that called for 'butchering Hindus', from an account of an individual who claimed to be a correspondent with Al Jazeera and also claimed to have worked with The Wire, in the past. BOOM investigated the claim and found the account to be spurious with both organisations outrightly rejecting the claim that the person behind the account was in any way connected to them...'
'The Supreme Court on Wednesday refused to hear a petition filed by social activist Harsh Manderseeking action against leaders of the Bharatiya Janata Party for their hate speeches leading up to communal riots in Delhi until the matter of the activist’s allegedly derogatory comments about the judiciary are sorted out. “You made statements against the Supreme Court,” said Chief Justice of India SA Bobde. “We will not hear you now... If this is what Harsh Mander feels about the Supreme Court, then we will have to decide on that first.”...
'Tamil Nadu’s opposition party DMK and AIADMK’s ally PMK have condemned the nomination of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) vice-chancellor M Jagadeesh Kumar as head of the Madras University vice-chancellor search panel. Tamil Nadu Governor Banwarilal Purohit, who is also the chancellor of Madras University, has nominated Kumar as the incumbent vice-chancellor P Duraisamy’s three-year tenure is ending this May...'
'Vadodara Smart City Development Company, a Special Purpose Vehicle (SPV) of the Vadodara Municipal Corporation (VMC), withdrew Rs 265 crore from Yes Bank a day before the Reserve Bank imposed a moratorium, an official said on Friday. On Thursday, the RBI restricted withdrawals from Yes Bank to Rs 50,000 per depositor due to the private lender's precarious financial situation...'
'On February 27, Hindu nationalist blog OpIndia published a “ground report” on the riots in North East Delhi, claiming that a temple was “forcibly occupied” and “attacked” by “frenzied Islamist fundamentalists”. The article was shared by BJP IT cell head Amit Malviya, and retweeted by the Twitter handle of BJP Assam. R Jagannathan, the editorial director of Swarajya, also retweeted the piece. Newslaundry hit the ground to verify the claims made in the report, and they turned out to be false...'
'Academician and women’s rights activist Madhu Purnima Kishwar Tuesday tweeted a video of men in skull caps indulging in violence, in a veiled reference to last week’s communal riots in the national capital... The tweet has so far received over 5,200 retweets and 7,500 likes. Kishwar, chair professor in the Indian Council of Social Science Research who founded women’s journal Manushi in 1979, has over 2 million followers on Twitter... The video shared by Madhu Kishwar is not even from India. It shows events that occurred on 1 December 2018 in Bangladesh’s Gazipur...'
'On February 28, several social media users shared a 20-second video of a building engulfed in fire. The viral message blamed “Islamic jihad” for the incident and claimed that this occurred in Paris. “After burning India’s capital, the terrorist community has burnt the French capital as well. #IslamicJihad Now tell did the riots happen because of @KapilMishra_IND’s speech. There is only one solution #EconomicBoycott,” reads the message... Twitter user @Satynistha posted the viral video (archive link).
'Faizan, the 23-year-old Muslim man who was filmed as he was brutally assaulted by policemen who forced him to sing the national anthem between beatings, died after the Delhi Police illegally detained him for over 36 hours and denied him urgent medical attention, HuffPost India can establish. Since news of Faizan’s death was made public on February 28, the Delhi Police has sought to deflect responsibility by claiming they never took Faizan into custody...'
