Harish Rawat's Old, Deleted Post Revived With Misleading Claim
Harish Rawat's deleted post was used to claim Ramesh Pokhriyal's daughter had married a Muslim person.
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The screenshot of a now-deleted social media post by former Uttarakhand Chief Minister Harish Rawat wishing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal Nishank's daughter for her wedding has gone viral to claim that she married a person from the Muslim community.
However, we found that the claim is false. On the day Rawat attended Dr Shreyasi Nishank's wedding, he also attended a Muslim individual's wedding. Rawat used one social media post to share photographs and congratulate both the families and that created the initial confusion.
Rawat later deleted his posts and shared the photos in two different posts to wish each family separately. Moreover, we found that Shreyasi is married to Major Deval Bajpai.
CLAIM
People shared Rawat's social media post which was caption, "कल #देहरादून में उत्तराखंड के पूर्व मुख्यमंत्री @DrRPNishank जी की पुत्री व मोहम्मद नौशाद जी के पुत्र के विवाह समारोह में सम्मिलित हुआ और वर-वधूओं को आशीर्वाद दिया एवं श्री निशंक जी/नौशाद जी को हार्दिक बधाई एवं शुभकामनाएं दी।"
[Translation: Yesterday I attended the wedding ceremonies of the daughter of former Chief Minister of Uttarakhand Dr R P Nishank ji and son of Mohammad Naushad ji in Dehradun and blessed the brides and grooms and conveyed hearty congratulations and best wishes to Shri Nishank ji/Naushad ji.]
Those sharing screenshot took a dig at the BJP leader and said, "संघी मुसलमानों से घृणा भी करते और #दामाद भी बनाते है।" [Sangh followers hate Muslims but also marry their daughters to Muslims.]
Several other people shared the screenshot on Facebook and Twitter, archives of some of which can be found here and here. We also found that the same claim was being shared in November 2021.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We conducted a keyword search for Dr Shreyasi's wedding in Hindi and found a news report by Hindi newspaper Amar Ujala talking about her wedding and the controversy that arose due to Rawat's Facebook post.
The article said that Rawat attended two weddings on Monday, 15 November 2021, but made a single post about both the events leading to the confusion. Some BJP members accused Rawat of indulging in dirty politics, the report added.
A fact-check published by Aaj Tak, found an archived version of the original tweet made by Rawat on 16 November 2021, which has now been deleted.
We looked for the name of Dr Shreyasi's husband and found a Dainik Jagran report that identified the groom as Major Deval Bajpai.
Evidently, an old post was shared to falsely claim that Dr Shreyasi had married a person from the Muslim community. The poorly worded social media post by Rawat was shared by social media users to take a dig at Dr Ramesh Pokhriyal.
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