No, Nirmala Sitharaman Did Not Touch Abhinandan’s Mother’s Feet

The woman whose feet the defence minister touches is Hema Kumari, mother of a martyr named Ajit Pradhan.

The Quint recently came across a video which falsely claimed that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman touched the feet of Abhinandan’s mother at a function.

(Photo: The Quint)

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Ever since Wing Commander Abhinandan Varthaman burst into the news space, fake news purveyors have peddled all sorts of fake claims related to him.

The Quint recently came across one such video which falsely claimed that Defence Minister Nirmala Sitharaman touched the feet of Abhinandan’s mother at a function.

CLAIM

A short video recently went viral on social media which shows the defence minister touching the feet of a lady. The caption along with the video read, “Nirmala Sitaraman our honourable defence minister touching the feet of Abhinandan's mother. These are the values that need to be inculcated in our children. It comes by setting an example not asking then to do [sic].”

TRUE OR FALSE

The claim is false. While the video is not a fabricated one, The Quint could establish that the woman whose feet the defence minister touches is not Abhinandan’s mother.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

A search on Facebook with the caption mentioned above shows that a number of individual users have shared the video.

Several users shared the video with the same caption(Photo Courtesy: Facebook)

A search on Twitter also shows similar results.

(Photo Courtesy: Twitter)

However, a reverse image search of the frames from the video shows that the defence minister’s act was from an event in Dehradun on Monday, 4 March. The event, in fact, got covered by various media outlets due to Sitharaman’s gesture.

Screen grab showing media coverage of the event.(Photo Courtesy: Google)

The Indian Express’ report of the event even includes a tweet by BJP’s Dehradun MLA Ganesh Joshi, who says that the woman in the video is Hem Kumari, mother of a martyr named Ajit Pradhan.

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