Fact Check: Viral video of tomato vendor with bouncers in Varanasi is staged; PTI takes down tweet

Hyderabad: Several media organizations and social media users on different platforms have shared a video showing a vegetable vendor deploying bouncers to protect tomatoes in Varanasi.

Media organizations like The Telegraph, Mirror Now, Times Now and The Tribune also published the same report on July 9, 2023.

There has been a lot of buzz on social media over the soaring price of tomatoes. Many memes and reels are being shared to showcase public sentiment towards the price rise. We can safely say that tomatoes have become a hot topic these days since they cost more than gasoline. Even McDonald’s has issued a notice stating that tomatoes will not be on the menu at their outlets.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found the claim false as the viral video is staged by a Samajwadi Party member and a vegetable vendor named Ajay Fauji.

We started our investigation by performing a keyword search and found that PTI, which earlier reported the incident as news, issued an apology letter on their official Twitter handle stating that the viral video is staged.

The PTI apology letter reads, “Earlier today, PTI tweeted a story about a vegetable vendor in Varanasi hiring bouncers in light of the high price of tomatoes. It has since come to our notice that the vendor is a worker of the Samajwadi Party, and his motive for giving us the information was questionable. We have, therefore, removed the tweet. We erred in not verifying the antecedents of the source for the story and failed to meet the high standards of accuracy and fairness we set for ourselves. We assure our readers that PTI remains committed to delivering accurate and unbiased news.”

We also found similar a tweet mentioning that the viral video was merely a staged act to protest against the sudden spike in tomato prices. Moreover, in the tweet, we can also see that the man acting the role of the vendor is Ajay Fauji, a member of the Samajwadi party.

Moving forward, we performed a search with the username Ajay Fauji and found an account with the same display picture.