Social media is replete with misinformation, rumours and fake news that is often disseminated with the motive of causing division among communities. This exercise is being conducted in an organised manner through various portals and twitter handles. One such portal, ShankhNaad.net is notorious for deliberately planting false information on the internet. ShankhNaad has been exposed on multiple occasions by fact checking websites including Alt News. That has however not deterred ShankhNaad from posting inflammatory content with alarming regularity. Let us take a look at the mischief it has resorted to since its inception in 2013.

1. Pakistan beat India in the Champions Trophy final on June 18, 2017. The very next day on June 19, ShankhNaad posted a video on twitter wherein it is seen that two youths on a bike are holding the Pakistan flag in their hands

This isn't sportsmanship but radical islamic extremism which attaches them to islamic nation. Why to tolerate this in d name of secularism? pic.twitter.com/oJ40G7NZHj — ShankhNaad (@ShankhNaad) June 19, 2017

The story expectedly turned out to be false. This was a video of two youth from the Muslim community out on the occassion of Eid-E-Milad in Dec 2016 according to Vadodara Police. Alt News exposed the truth which can be read here.

2. Recently in October, ShankhNaad tweeted about the desecration of the statue of Swami Vivekananda at Bhadohi in UP as being the handiwork of muslims

The SP of Bhadohi, following these rumours issued a clarification stating that one Premchandra Gautam had been arrested. Clearly, an attempt was made to inflame passions between the members of the two communities. This lie too was debunked by Alt News.

3. In September 2017, ShankhNaad posted a video on twitter claiming that Muslims had set a Hindu temple on fire and indulged in rioting and arson in Hyderabad

Chilling video shows how #Hindu Temple, Vehicles & Cows in Goshala were set on fire by Muslim mobs in #Hyderabad, India.

*Date Unknown* pic.twitter.com/gpA596BdN7 — ShankhNaad (@ShankhNaad) September 26, 2017

The video was promptly debunked by Hyderabad police which issued a statement that the video was fake and that no such violence had taken place anywhere in Hyderabad.

4. On July 30 2017, ShankhNaad posted a gruesome video of a man’s hands being chopped off. ShankhNaad claimed that the video was of Rajesh, an RSS worker who was killed in Thiruvananthapuram. The video was widely shared before it was revealed that it was actually a video from Brazil shot in 2014 when a suspected thief had been assaulted. ShankhNaad subsequently deleted the tweet.

5. In July 2017, another false piece of information was shared by ShankhNaad. It alleged that a Hindu female convict died after she had been brutalised by a Muslim jailor at the Byculla prison in Mumbai

Why no outrage over this??

Jailor Waseema Shaikh inserted lathi inside private parts of Hindu woman convict.

Inpired by… Posted by Shankh Naad on Tuesday, July 4, 2017

The truth of the matter was that the convict Manjula Shetye had been assaulted by five women constables including Waseema Sheikh. The other constables were Hindu. This was another deliberate attempt to rouse tension between Muslims and Hindus.

6. Again in July 2017, ShankhNaad posted a video of a police station being attacked, claiming that members of the Muslim community at Shamli in UP attacked the police station and indulged in rioting and arson

How Muslim mob had attacked police station, pelted stones, arson, riots. Routine for them.#NotInMyName gang keeps silence on it, always. pic.twitter.com/YPWGVq3aWh — ShankhNaad (@ShankhNaad) July 2, 2017

This is 2 year old video in which legal action has already been taken. — shamli police (@shamlipolice) July 3, 2017

Shamli police immediately issued a clarification saying that said video was two years old and appropriate action had already been taken.

7. On June 30 2017, ShankhNaad posted on its twitter timeline a video wherein it claimed that Muslims were beating up Hindus who had gathered for the Ganesha Chaturthi festival in Maharashtra

The video in question was actually shot in 2009 at Miraj in Sangli when violence had broken out over an inflammatory poster that had been put up during the Ganesh Utsav.

8. ShankNaad did not even spare the father of the nation. In an article that it shared on its twitter timeline, it attributed a quote to Mahatma Gandhi wherein he asked Hindu and Sikh women to ‘cooperate with Muslim rapists’

This outrageous claim was debunked by Alt News.

9. In October 2014, the Facebook page of ShankhNaad which was then named ‘Dr Subramanian Swamy’ passed off a photo of a girl who was grieving her father’s death as a Yazidi rape victim of ISIS.

10. In January 2014, ShankhNaad’s FB page ‘Dr Subramanian Swamy’ shared a picture of police lathicharging protesters. The post claimed that Hindus in Bangladesh were being beaten up by Muslims. However, the photo in question was that of violence that had broken out in Bangladesh during the elections and it had nothing to do with Muslims beating up Hindus.

11. On July 4 2017 when Prime Minister Narendra Modi was on a state visit to Israel, ShankhNaad posted a photo of a protest, claiming that it was organised by Indian Muslims against the PM’s visit. This lie was busted when it came to light that the photo in question was of a protest that took place in Sri Lanka in 2012.

ShankhNaad’s website Shankhnaad.net was registered in October 2013. It is owned by Rahul Priyadarshi. Since its inception, it has been systematically posting malicious information with the intention of vitiating inter-community relations. The posts are such that the minority community is blamed for the provocations with the intention of sowing the seeds of hatred and division. It has more than 1.3 million followers on Facebook and 18000 followers on Twitter who are continuously fed untruth through provocative videos that are uploaded with misleading titles and captions, photos which are taken out of context and inflammatory messages that are circulated almost on a daily basis. Alt News has repeatedly busted ShankhNaad’s lies. The divisive agenda of this page is well-known. When will Facebook and Twitter act? Are authorities waiting for a communal flare up before action is taken against the person behind the page?

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