“Being raped by invader and become their sex slave is way better than committing jauhar (suicide) to avoid that life”. This ludicrous statement was apparently made by actress Swara Bhasker, according to ShankhNaad. The communal rabble-rousing page put out this quote attributed to her.

The quote has circulated widely among right-wing twitter handles and Facebook pages. Recently, Bhasker had written an open letter to Sanjay Leela Bhansali, director of the movie Padmaavat and expressed her disagreement and disapproval of the portrayal of the queen and her decision to commit ‘jauhar’ after Chittor had been besieged by Alauddin Khilji. Bhasker’s view gained much traction on social media. She was attacked for her view by certain sections, some of whom stooped rather low.

Swara bhaskar should go to a

Taliban/ ISIS camp for a few days

and

stay there to understand why our Women committed Jauhar .. pic.twitter.com/G0HtGy7WhP — Mahesh Vikram Hegde (@mvmeet) January 30, 2018

We have interviewed many ‘ex-naxal’ women in Bastar. Each has gut-wrenching stories to tell, full of abuse, rape and misogyny If they marry, they aren’t allowed to have children. I think fake feminist @ReallySwara must make a trip to understand how the Real Vagina feels like. — Vivek Agnihotri (@vivekagnihotri) January 30, 2018

Now @ReallySwara will tell the girl she had the right to be raped 100 times during 10 months, and will blame her for succumbing to ‘patriarchy’ by burning her face! #sickening. https://t.co/tmGXpWf50M — Shefali Vaidya (@ShefVaidya) January 30, 2018

Mahesh Vikram Hegde is followed by Prime Minister Narendra Modi on twitter, and is the founder and admin of the fake news website Postcard.news which only recently had shared a fake quote attributed to actor Farhan Akhtar over the communal violence in Kasganj, U.P.

Bhasker spoke to Alt News. Expressing outrage, she said “This meme by ShankhNaad is an utter and blatant lie. I have literally not used these words strung next to each other in any utterance nor anything I’ve ever said or written in public or in private. I think this perverse, wilful twisting of my article and the argument in the article has been done to serve the hateful and poisonous motives of Shanknaad and it reeks of vicious intent.

It’s scary and shameful that a politely worded review of a film should be twisted for such sinister purposes. I think this amounts to criminal defamation”.

This is a BLATANT LIE. @ShankhNaad pls publish an official apology or we can take this to court.. https://t.co/yJQe6UpX7l — Swara Bhasker (@ReallySwara) January 30, 2018

Forced on the backfoot and threatened with lawsuit, ShankhNaad deleted the tweet containing the quote and issued a ‘clarification’ and an ‘apology’, hiding behind ‘technicalities’.

If I say “I want to consume KCN” doesn’t mean someone can quote me saying “I want to die”. Apologies for technicalities, here @ReallySwara , corrected it.. pic.twitter.com/IxI8Y4UPO7 — ShankhNaad (@ShankhNaad) January 31, 2018

For those who are aware of the kind of inflammatory content that ShankhNaad shares, such mischief is not surprising and sadly, not unexpected. This is because no action has been taken against the page and its owner despite being repeatedly exposed over its blatantly communal agenda, posting malicious content with regularity and impunity.

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