My Nation spreads fake news about Rahul Gandhi’s Dubai trip

On January 13, My Nation published a story, Rahul Gandhi dumbfounded in Dubai by little girl’s questions, which was fact-checked by Alt News and found to be false.

In the story, My Nation reported that Congress president Rahul Gandhi had faced embarrassing questions from a young girl during his recent visit to Dubai. The two questions, as reported by My Nation, were: “How Rahul, who speaks against caste and religious discrimination, displays his Hindu-ness by applying ashes on his forehead and going to temples in Gujarat and wears the kufis (traditional cap that Muslims wear) while visiting Kashmir?” and “Congress prides itself for having ruled India for several decades. The welfare and development that were not achieved then, will be done now?”

According to Alt News, “The claim originated from a Tamil website and was picked up by My Nation followed by Postcard News and Rightlog.” The report also states that a picture of a young girl was circulated in all the articles and social media posts.

A reverse image search shows that “the picture of the girl was taken from a 3-year-old Youtube video titled, “Save Girl Child Powerful Speech by Siddhi Bagwe”. Further investigation from Alt News, including confirmation from two journalists who covered Rahul Gandhi’s Dubai trip, showed that no such questions were raised.

Later, My Nation‘s editor-in-chief Abhijit Majumder tweeted that the story had been updated with confirmation from the Congress party.

The updated story quoted Congress’s Aarathi Krishnan confirming to MyNation that the two questions were indeed asked. However, Krishnan has now tweeted that she has been misquoted and no such questions were asked.