Fact Check: Fake quote about Indian students stranded in Ukraine attributed to Nirmala Sitharaman
A news card is doing the rounds of social media claiming that Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she will carry students stranded in Ukraine on her shoulders.
By Tejal Sinha Published on 6 March 2022 1:37 PM GMT
Hyderabad: A news card is doing the rounds of social media claiming that Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman said she will carry students stranded in Ukraine on her shoulders.
The text on the news cards, written in Tamil, can be roughly translated to, "Union minister Nirmala Sitharaman saying, "I can carry on my shoulders the students who went to Ukraine without studying in their own country" on the question of why there was a delay in rescuing students."
The post is viral on Facebook and can be viewed here.
Fact Check
The claim is false.
NewsMeter searched for reports about the finance minister's statement but found none. If she had made such a statement, it would have been reported by the mainstream media.
We found that Ms. Sitharaman had on 27 February shared a similar news card on Twitter and said that it was fake news. Sharing the viral news card, she had tweeted, "What is this? Where did this come from? Lies! Such a question-and-answer did not occur."
We noticed that a few of the news cards had the logo of 'News7 Tamil' while some had the logo of 'PuthiyathalaimuraiTV'. We searched the social media pages of the two organisations and found that both News7 Tamil and PuthiyathalaimuraiTV had tweeted that the news cards were fake and morphed.
It is evident that the claim made through the viral post is false. Union finance minister Nirmala Sitharaman made no such statement. The viral news card has been morphed.
