Fact Check: Old Photo Of Students’ Protest Against RSS Goes Viral As New

Three-year-old image of a Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU) student carrying an anti-Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh poster is making rounds online as part of the recent JNU protests. The image of a woman holding a placard with anti-RSS slogan was posted by Twitter handle ‘India With RSS‘.

“What is the relation between fee hike and RSS?”, the tweet reads.

What is the relation between fee hike and RSS?

What is relation of “Red Fort” with fee hike?

Why the statue of Vivekananda was disgraced?

Actually it has nothing to do with fee hike. It was a politically motivated campaign against a particular ideology. #LeftKillingJNU pic.twitter.com/q0nrUGCCEB

— India With RSS (@IndiaWithRSS) November 21, 2019

For the last couple of weeks, the nation has witnessed massive protests by the students JNU against a stiff hike in hostel fees.

Claim

The photo is claimed to be from the ongoing Jawaharlal Nehru University protest.

Fact Check

After a reverse image search on google, we found out that the disputed photo is about four years old, from 2016.

We came across a very similar photo of another female student holding the same placard that was uploaded by the Students Federation of India (SFI) unit of JNU on their official Facebook page about four years ago. The photo had tagged the woman identifying her as Satarupa Chakraborty.

Also after the reverse image search on Yandex, we came across a Catch News article, published on February 2, 2016, with the headline “#RohithVemula: female eye-witness on the horror of being assaulted by Delhi police” According to the article, the original image was taken on January 30 from a protest march that was organized on the occasion of 27th birth anniversary of Rohith Vemula, the late student of Hyderabad Central University student.

In conclusion, a three-year-old image from a protest organized by students in the national capital against the RSS was shared with the claim that the recent JNU students’ protest against the fee hike was politically motivated.

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