Lighthouse Journalism came across a newspaper clipping being widely shared on social media platforms, especially WhatsApp. This newspaper clip mentioned that several countries have banned vegetables from India. The blurb on the clip mentions, ‘pesticide issue’. During the investigation we found that the news is old from the year 2014 and not recent.
Claim:
Instagram user, bbarajivdixit shared the newspaper clip on his profile.
Check the archive version of the story.
Other users too are sharing the same image as recent.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by a simple Google reverse image search on the image.
This took us to a Facebook post by page Back to Village. The newspaper clip was posted by the page on 8th September 2021.
Further we found that the same newspaper clip was posted on another Facebook page, Green TV India on 15th July 2017.
There was one sentence in the post that caught our attention, the caption mentioned that the news report was old. Hence we read the contents of the news report and found a sentence in Hindi (translation): High Court has expressed concern about several countries restricting the import of vegetables from India.
We then did a Google keyword search on this and also checked for news reports consisting name, ‘chief justice G Rohini’
It was through this keyword search that we found a news report in Business standard from April 30, 2014.
The news report mentioned: A plea was filed Wednesday in the Delhi High Court seeking immediate ban on sale of fruits and vegetables, which contain artificial colour and harmful preservatives.
A division bench of Chief Justice G. Rohini and Justice R.S. Endlaw, agreeing to hear the PIL, posted the plea for May 21 and clubbed it with another petition that relates to pesticides in fruits and vegetables.
We then found a report on the website of NDTV too. This report was also uploaded in 2014.
We also found a press note by the PIB on their website about the same.
The press note mentioned: India’s exports of fresh fruits & vegetables during 2014-15 (Apr. – Jan.) have fallen by 14.02% in USD terms as compared to exports during the corresponding period of 2013-14.
Conclusion: News report from 2014 of a plea filed in Delhi High Court about the use of pesticides in fruits and vegetables and HC expressing concern over the ban on import by several countries on the same has gone viral as recent. The newspaper clip is old.
