Fact Check: 2019 photo of Punjab railway employees' protest shared with false claims
By Mounika Dasari Published on 4 Sep 2020 5:20 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A photo allegedly showing a group of Railway employees protesting the privatization of the Railways has gone viral on social media along with claims that the mainstream media is not reporting the protests.
On 31 August, a Facebook user posted the image along with a caption in Hindi that translates as, "Millions of Railway employees have been protesting against the privatization of the Railways for seven consecutive days all over the country. The 'dalal' media is only reporting news on Sushant Rajput's death and is not covering the protest..."
The post was shared over 225 times and received more than 650 reactions.
Similar claims can be found here.
On 31 August, a Twitter user had also tweeted, "About 9 lakh railway employees in the country are on strike in protest against privatization, not even news to the media (sic)."
Here is the archived link.
Fact Check:
The photo that is being shared allegedly showing Railway employees protesting against the privatization of Railways is one-year-old. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
NewsMeter did a reverse image search and found that this image is from a news website, Rail Samachar. On 15 July 2019, Rail Samachar had covered the Railway employees' protest against privatization.
The same images were tweeted by Nawab Malik, a Cabinet minister of Maharashtra, on 15 July 2019. The Hindi tweet translates as, "Why is the media ignoring the movement against privatization by millions of Railway personnel across the country? Has the fourth pillar of democracy collapsed?"
Dainik Jagran also reported the protests last year.
Hence, the claim that Railway workers are protesting the privatization of Railways for the past seven days is FALSE.
