Fact Check: Old video of Amit Shah saying BJP got you freedom from Mukhtar Ansari falsely linked to his death
The video is from a public rally of Shah held in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, in April 2019. It is being falsely linked to Ansari’s death.
By Md Mahfooz Alam Published on 2 April 2024 1:00 PM GMT
Screengrab of the post making the false claim. (Source: X/@MukeshMohannn)
Claim: The video shows Shah accepting that gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari was poisoned in jail.
Fact: The video is from a public rally of Shah held in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh, in April 2019. It is being falsely linked to Ansari’s death.
Hyderabad: Gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari and five-time MLA from Mau constituency in Eastern UP died on March 28 from a cardiac arrest.
Ansari (63) was convicted in eight cases in the last two years and was lodged in Banda Jail in UP. Ansari’s son Umar Ansari and brother Afzal Ansari, who is also a Ghazipur MP, alleged that Ansari was subjected to slow poisoning in jail.
Against this backdrop, a video of home minister Amit Shah has gone viral with the claim that it shows Shah accepting that Mukhtar Ansari was poisoned.
In the video, Shah could be heard saying, “The biggest work that we have done is giving you freedom from the ‘NIZAM’. ‘N’ means BJP giving you freedom from Nasimuddin Siddiqui; ‘I’ means freedom from Imran Masood; and similarly freedom from Azam Khan, Atiq Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari that BJP has got for you. If this SP-BSP alliance comes to power, there will be NIZAM’s rule again in Uttar Pradesh. (translated from Hindi)”
“Amit Shah is saying that Bharatiya Janata Party got us freedom from Mukhtar Ansari. Doesn’t it appear as if Shah poisoned Ansari with his own hands? (translated from Hindi)” wrote an X user who shared the video. (Archive)
Several Facebook users have also shared the video claiming the same. Click here, here, here, and here to view the posts.
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the video is from a public rally of Shah held in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh in April 2019.
On carefully watching the video, we found ‘10.04.2019’ appearing and disappearing at 0:04 seconds. Similarly, the text ‘Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh’ appears at 0:06 seconds.
Taking this cue, we ran a relevant keyword search and found Shah’s public address in Kasganj live-streamed on BJP’s YouTube channel on April 10, 2019, titled ‘Shri Amit Shah addresses public meeting in Kasganj, Uttar Pradesh.’ The viral clip appears in the video after the 19:27-minute timestamp.
We also found the ‘salient points’ of the Shah’s speech published on the website of BJP on April 10, 2019. The point related to freedom from ‘NIZAM’ is in the second paragraph.
A report by Jagran published on April 10, 2019, which mentioned the NIZAM analogy used by the Shah for Nasimuddin Siddiqui, Imran Masood, Azam Khan, Atiq Ahmed and Mukhtar Ansari during the speech stated that the home minister was in Kasganj to address the public meeting in support of BJP candidate Rajveer Singh.
Hence, we conclude that a clip from an old speech of Amit Shah is being falsely linked to the recent death of gangster-turned-politician Mukhtar Ansari in Banda jail.
