Fact check: Is there a communal angle to the Pune mob lynching?
By Satya Priya BN Published on 16 Feb 2020 6:17 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A shocking incident occurred in the general compartment of Mumbai-Lathur-Beed Express in the early hours of Thursday. A 26-year-old man Sagar Markad, was lynched to death by 13 ticketless travellers, in front of his wife and infant child.
This news spread like wild fire, and people started interpretations of their own, especially on the social media. Several users gave it a communal colour.
The viral message goes as "Sagar (26) was traveling in Train from Pune with his wife & new born girl He requested a Burkha clad woman to make space for his wife in general bogey, Her 12 family members lynched him to death in front of his wife & new born girl."
This is being shared in Facebook also.
Fact Check:
This incident has been covered by many media organisations like Navbharat Times, India Times, News18, Pune Mirror, among others. However, they refrained from revealing the religion of the offenders, who killed Sagar Markad.
But we found a tweet from Central Railways clarifying that there was NO communal angle to the lynching. According to their tweet, "There were no two communities involved in this incident. It was a fallout of a tiff over seat-sharing in a compartment of the train. Refrain from giving a communal angle to it. Please do not spread unverified and fake news."
In reply to the tweet, when many requested names of the accused, the railway authorities tweeted the names of the offenders along with their age.
Therefore, the claim that burkha-clad women lynched Sagar Markad is FALSE. It was an unfortunate incident which happened over an argument over seating arrangement.
