The second wave of coronavirus has proved fatal for India with patients unable to get ICU beds and oxygen supply. Several have died waiting to be admitted to hospitals, leaving supporters of different parties passing the buck as states run out of oxygen. A section of journalists and members and supporters of the BJP have targetted the AAP government in Delhi by tweeting an identical screenshot of four handles sharing the exact story about the demise of their grandfather. The first tweet is by the Chairperson of the Delhi Commission for Women Swati Maliwal who said that her grandfather passed away waiting to be admitted to Sharda Hospital in Noida. Meanwhile, it is being shared on social media with captions falsely claiming that Delhi Commission for Women’s chairperson Swati Maliwal has concocted a story about her grandfather’s death to defame the Uttar Pradesh government.
The viral screenshot shows a tweet from Maliwal’s official Twitter handle which has been replicated by two other handles and used by a third handle to troll her. Raja Rammohun Roy Library Foundation chairman Kanchan Gupta, BJP members Keya Ghosh and Surendra Poonia also shared the screenshot. Gupta suggested that AAP is targetting the UP government through a copy-paste campaign. BJP supporters Rishi Bagree and Anshul Saxena also promoted the claim that Maliwal ‘faked’ her grandfather’s death. Though, most of these posts are now deleted.
Swati Maliwal had tweeted about her grandfather’s demise on April 22. She wrote that her grandfather died after waiting for half an hour in front of Sharda Hospital, Greater Noida. The next day, she tweeted about his cremation and also wrote, “Meanwhile fake tweets have been propagated on social media and people have been calling him names”.
The statement was tweeted by three handles namely @AdolffHitlar, @kaplnameena01 and @RamsamVenkat shortly after the DCW chairperson’s tweet.
@AdolfHitlar has pinned the tweet copying Maliwal’s account of her grandfather’s condition on the day of his death. The handle wrote that its tweet was ‘sarcastic’.
A representative from her office said, “Uttar Pradesh police has registered an FIR regarding this. The handles which have copied ma’am’s tweet, two of them belong to some trolls of BJP who have later mentioned in their tweets that they were just trying to make fun.” “This is actually very shameful that several senior journalists and several eminent personalities from one of the biggest political party stoop down to such low levels trying to defame a person and trying to mock someone’s death,” the official told
The handle @AdolffHitlar has been suspended while @RamsamVenkat doesn’t exist anymore. Meanwhile, Twitter handle @Kaplnameena01 has been renamed @Kaplnameena. This third handle has now deleted the tweet.
A tweet from UP police’s verified Twitter handle regarding the screenshot was uploaded, in this the Uttar Pradesh police writes ‘We deeply regret the loss of precious human lives in the pandemic & understand the outburst of family members on social media who have been bereaved. At the same time we came across a disturbing trend of copy paste of the same messages by apparently fake handles’.
