Morphed ABP News Screenshot on 'Samrat Prithviraj' Shared as Real

The Delhi High Court had dismissed a plea filed against the film-makers of 'Samrat Prithviraj'.

Fact-Check | A fabricated ABP News screenshot has gone viral with a false claim about the movie, Samrat Prithviraj.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

The screenshot of a purported ABP News bulletin has gone viral with a claim that the Delhi High Court had asked the film-makers of the Akshay Kumar-starrer Samrat Prithviraj to depict Prithviraj Chauhan as a Gurjar King and not a Rajput, in their film.

A plea was filed by the Gurjar Samaj Sarv Sangthan Sabha Ekta Samanya Samiti against Yash Raj Films, Aditya Chopra, Uday Chopra, and Chandra Prakash Dwivedi, the producers and directors of the film, asking for a stay on the release of the movie.

The petitioner had alleged that Prithviraj was wrongly depicted as a Rajput in the movie.

However, we found that the claim was false. We didn't find any such report on the social media handles of ABP News. In fact, the news channel called the screenshot "fake."

We also found that the Delhi High Court had dismissed the plea after hearing arguments from both sides.

THE CLAIM

A Facebook page called 'The Glorious Jats' shared the viral image and wrote a caption accusing the filmmakers of "trying to erase the history of Jats."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The screenshot was shared widely on Facebook and Twitter, and the archived posts can be found here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We conducted a keyword search of the claim mentioned in the viral screenshot and didn't find any news reports on ABP News or other media organisations.

Instead, we found a news report on NDTV from 1 June that said that the Delhi High Court had dismissed a plea that had been filed to stay the release of the movie.

Similar news reports were also published by The New Indian Express and LiveLaw.

According to the news reports, the plea was filed by the Gurjar Samaj Sarv Sangthan Sabha Ekta Samanya Samiti to stay the release of the film stating that it wrongly depicts Prithviraj Chauhan as a Rajput king.

The petitioner also claimed that the film was based on Chand Bardai Barot's book Prithviraj Raso and the book refers to Chauhan as a Gurjar Warrior.

The counsel for the film-makers told the court that the movie neither depicted Chauhan as a Rajput nor a Gurjar and added that the king was kept "caste-neutral."

The matter was later disposed of when the petitioner expressed satisfaction with the respondents' answer and did not wish to press the petition any further.

The court's order can be found here.

We also noticed that the logo used in the screenshot was an old ABP News logo, which has been changed since December 2020.

Comparison between the two logos.

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

The news channel, too, termed the post "fake news."

The channel called the post fake.

(Source: ABP/Screenshot)

Evidently, a fabricated screenshot of the ABP News breaking news bulletin was shared to falsely claim that the Delhi High Court ordered Yash Raj Films to depict Prithviraj Chauhan as a Gurjar leader.

Edited, morphed, and fabricated screenshots of ABP News bulletins have previously been used to spread misinformation and the WebQoof team has debunked them here, here, and here.

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