Lighthouse Journalism came across a video of Rahul Gandhi giving a video byte to a news channel. The post claimed that Rahul Gandhi was speaking in support of the accused in the murder of Kanhaiya Lal, a tailor who was killed in his shop by two men in Udaipur in 2022. The two men, Ghaus Mohammad and Riyas Attari, recorded a video where they admitted to killing Kanhaiya. The duo were arrested subsequently. During the investigation we found out that Rahul Gandhi is speaking against those who vandalised the office of Congress. Viral claim is misleading.
Claim:
X user Manoj Srivastava shared the video with a misleading claim on his profile.
Check the archive version of the claim here.
Other users too are sharing the same claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a combination of Google reverse image search and keyword search.
A keyword search led us to a news report on the website of news nine.
The news report published on 01 July, 2022, mentioned Senior Congress leaders accompanied Rahul Gandhi during the visit to his Kalpetta office which was attacked by SFI members last week.
The key highlights mentioned: They are children, They have done a silly thing, I don’t have anger or hostility towards them
The report also mentioned: Congress leader and Wayanad Lok Sabha MP Rahul Gandhi on Friday visited his office at Kalpetta in his constituency, which was vandalised by SFI workers last week. Gandhi, who arrived on Friday, is on a three-day visit to his constituency. “This is the office of the people of Wayanad. It was unfortunate. They are children. They have done a silly thing. I don’t have anger or hostility towards them,” he said. Senior Congress leaders Oommen Chandy, K Sudhakaran, KC Venugopal and VD Satheeshan accompanied Gandhi during the visit. He inspected the damaged furniture.
We found several other reports about the same.
One news report had several details from his visit.
Rahul, who reached Wayanad Friday for a three-day tour in the constituency, visited the vandalised office at Kalpetta, headquarters of Wayanad district. “This is my office. But before being my office, this is the office of the people of Wayanad. It is quite unfortunate that the office has been attacked. Violence will never resolve problems. It is not good that they have acted in an irresponsible manner. I don’t have any anger or hostility towards them. They are kids and they don’t understand the consequences of their act,” he said without referring to either SFI or CPI(M).
Further the report also mentioned the Udaipur beheading incident: Referring to Friday’s Supreme Court observation that Nupur Sharma, who was suspended as BJP spokesperson over her controversial comments on the Prophet, Rahul said the atmosphere in the country has been created by the ruling dispensation. “It is not the person who made the comment, it is the Prime Minister, it is the Home Minister, it is BJP and RSS that have created this environment in the country.” The court said Sharma “is single-handedly responsible for what is happening in the country”, while referring to the Udaipur beheading incident.
Further during the keyword search we found a few reports that mentioned that an FIR was lodged for ‘distorting’ Rahul Gandhi remarks.
The report mentioned: Kaswan alleged that the line “they are kids and don’t understand the consequences of the act” was aired at the programme on July 1 as Gandhi’s response to the Udaipur tailor’s murder. “It appears that Rahul Gandhi’s statement was put out of context in order to provoke the public. I also find that MP Rajyavardhan Singh Rathore, Major Surendra Punia and Kamlesh Saini are also in this as they had also tweeted it.”
We found a video of the statement Rahul Gandhi gave to the press.
Here it can be seen he is talking about those who vandalised the Congress office.
Further we ran a check about the Zee News video report that was being shared about Rahul Gandhi’s comments on Udaipur killings.
We found a news report mentioning Zee News had apologized for linking Rahul Gandhi’s unrelated remarks to the Udaipur killing.
We found a news report that mentioned that the Zee News anchor, Rohit Ranjan was detained by the police.
Conclusion: Viral video of Rahul Gandhi’s remarks on vandalism of Wayanad Congress office, falsely linked to Udaipur killing goes viral with false claim again. Zee News in 2022 had tendered an apology about the same. Viral claim is misleading.
