The farmer, Sukhdev Singh, said he suffered multiple strokes of lathis (ITP)
New Delhi:
The image of an old man running around as a policeman attacking him with a stick during the farmers’ protests went viral after several congressional leaders tweeted it and the BJP questioned whether he was actually beaten.
BJP’s head of social media Amit Malviya’s fact-checking tweet, which discredits Rahul Gandhi, was branded by Twitter as “manipulated media”, a first for India.
NDTV located the farmer in the picture, Sukhdev Singh, who said he suffered multiple strokes from lathis and has bruises all over his body. The 60-year-old was among farmers on the Singhu border between Delhi and Haryana, who faced heavy police repression on Friday while trying to enter the capital.
“They beat us with water cannons, tear gas and then they used sticks,” Sukhdev Singh said, showing a dark welt on his arm.
“I hurt my whole body, my legs, my back …”
Singh, still at the scene with hundreds of farmers on the road, said he couldn’t understand why he was beaten when he wasn’t chanting slogans or throwing stones. He came from Kapurthala in Punjab and has decided to stay until the agricultural laws that triggered the protests are withdrawn by the central government.
The image that was tweeted by several congressional leaders, including Rahul Gandhi, showed Sukhdev Singh dodging a hit from a CRPF (Central Reserve Police Force) staff.
Amit Malviya tweeted that the photo was half true, that the farmer was never hit. He wrote “propaganda vs. reality” while posting a video that showed the policeman raising the baton but the farmer escaping the coup.
Rahul Gandhi must be the most discredited opposition leader India has seen in a long time. https://t.co/9wQeNE5xAPpic.twitter.com/b4HjXTHPSx
– Amit Malviya (@amitmalviya) November 28, 2020
The fact-checking website Alt News later posted a longer video, showing police officers throwing blows at protesters. However, it was not clear whether Mr. Singh was beaten.
The head of the BJP IT cell, Amit Malviya, tried to soften the police action against the protesting farmers using a cut video. While he claimed that an elderly farmer was not beaten, there are videos of him showing his injuries. pic.twitter.com/Cz4ZQsaVgI
– Alternative News (@AltNews) December 3, 2020
Images taken on Instagram by PTI photographer Ravi Choudhary, who took the original photo tweeted by Rahul Gandhi, showed Singh being struck on the shin, albeit possibly by another police officer.
Sukhdev Singh, 60, was among the farmers on the Singhu border between Delhi and Haryana, who faced heavy police repression on Friday while trying to enter Delhi (PTI)
Ravi Choudhary was quoted by Alt News as saying: “I clicked on the image from the other side and it cannot be said for sure whether the cane touched the farmer or not because there was a lot of commotion at the time. The police were lathi- charging at the protesters and the farmer was running in the other direction to save himself. He may have been hit by another policeman before, if not this one. “
.
