Fake news is so pervasive today and has been used for so many nefarious purposes of late that it is difficult to differentiate between right and wrong. It has been used so widely around the world as well, including by Pakistan’s Permanent Representative to the UN Maleeha Lodhi—she showed the picture of a woman injured in Gaza, trying to pass it off at the General Assembly as a woman injured in pellet firing in Kashmir—that it often inadvertently interferes with those on the side of justice. The incident of the lathicharge on women students at the Banaras Hindu University (BHU), for example, has fallen prey to that.
Expectedly, every sane thinking person has been outraged with the lathicharge, that too by the male police. But social media outrage has been marred by a fake picture of an injured girl, taken from another incident in another place and time and used to depict the horrible incident of lathi-charge.
Fake news and fake picture identifier AltNews, which has earned considerable fame in pointing out how sections owing allegiance to the ruling dispensation have used fake pictures, has found that one picture being circulated in social media was out of sync. It did not belong to the BHU incident. Renowned people including senior advocate and activist Prashant Bhushan had tweeted the picture. Bhushan has, of course, clarified his mistake and apologised.
Students of BHU were protesting against the molestation of a student, but it became ugly when the police interfered and many were injured. Many pictures of those injured were on air and women’s safety at BHU under the current BJP government became an issue.
Among others sharing this fake picture were Sanjay Singh, Ashok Gehlot, Mrinal Pandey and Swati Chaturvedi. This was the picture:
However, the above picture wasn’t from BHU at all. AltNews clarifies that it was from an incident “in Lakhimpur Khiri where a girl was attacked by a stalker. The image was published by Jagran and News 18.”
As of now, most of those tweeted and retweeted images have been deleted.
How it started is not known, but the image was certainly attached from a different source on purpose, to whip up tensions in an already hot situation.
With mainline journalism on the wane, belief in unreliable sources is on the rise. There is little patience for the right and correct news. This has often led to unnecessary rise of temperature in situations where control could have otherwise been achieved with reason. Technically, though, it would not be possible for an ordinary user to verify each and every image that some his or her way through social media. That creates a huge misunderstanding and more trouble.
—India Legal Bureau