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A morphed tweet of actor Ali Fazal is doing the rounds on social media in a boycott campaign against web series, Mirzapur 2.
Fazal’s tweet on anti-CAA protests in December 2019 has been altered to include an image of Intelligence Bureau official Ankit Sharma’s body, which was found in a drain, on 26 February during the northeast Delhi violence.
CLAIM
The tweet by the actor is being shared with a call for boycott of Mirzapur 2. The actor has been called ‘hinduphobic’ and a ‘shameless supporter of killings’ in the Delhi violence.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
While the text “PROTESTS : SURU MAJBOORI MEIN KIYE THHEY, AB MAJA AA RAHA HAI!! (sic)" was tweeted by Ali Fazal, the original tweet has been edited to include the picture of the IB official.
The actor had tweeted this on 19 December 2019, which is before the violence in Delhi. He has now deleted the tweet but an archived version can be viewed here.
Fazal also clarified that he had to delete the tweet since it was being used to mislead the public.
Further, the image added to Fazal’s tweet by the social media users of the IB official can be traced back to IndiaToday’s photographer, Qamar Sibtain.
Sibtain tweeted the image on 27 February 2020, whereas Fazal had shared the tweet much before in December 2019, so he could not have used the image.
In an interview to The Quint’s Deeksha Sharma, Fazal said, “At the time it was the wrong usage of my words or rather the wrong interpretation. At that time, there were people, the youth of our country, they were outside. Things like these don’t happen. We don’t come together. Our country hasn’t seen people come together, and reading the Constitution of our nation together and in that little moment, I had written the post.”
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