A letter from Congress leader Jairam Ramesh to BJP chief J P Nadda refers to a Zee News report aired on July 1, which falsely linked Gandhi’s comments on the attack at his Wayanad office with the murder of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.
The Congress party has demanded an apology from Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leaders for sharing an edited video of Rahul Gandhi played by a television channel, Zee News, which falsely suggested that he called the Udaipur murder accused, “children”.
In a letter to BJP president J P Nadda, Congress communication in-charge Jairam Ramesh referred to a Zee News report aired on July 1, which falsely linked Gandhi’s comments on the attack on his Wayanad office with the murder of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur.
In his comments, Gandhi had spoken about the workers of the Students Federation of India (SFI) who attacked his office in Kerala’s Wayanad last week.
Ramesh wrote, “What is of even greater concern, is that several of your party colleagues, including Shri Rajyavardhan Rathore, MP, Shri Subrat Pathak MP, Shri Kamlesh Saini, MLA and others, have enthusiastically and without verification published and shared the deliberately fabricated and distorted reportage.”
“The original video was Shri. Rahul Gandhi’s comment on the SFI violence on his Wayanad office but it was deliberately and mischievously doctored to appear as if it was a comment on the heinous murder of Kanhaiya Lal in Udaipur,” added Ramesh in his letter on Saturday.
“Despite being cautioned by my party colleagues that the clip was maliciously false and misleading, Shri Rathore persisted with amplifying the same, first deleting and then re-uploading the same. This leaves no doubt that his actions were deliberate and part of your party’s strategy to defame the former INC president, to defame the Congress party and to further polarise an already sensitive, communal situation,” he also said.
Ramesh also said in the letter, “We expect that you and your party colleagues will cease and desist from spreading such falsehoods. Furthermore, I expect that you will immediately issue an appropriate apology on behalf of your colleagues who have acted with such reckless disregard towards the truth.”
He warned that if the apology was not issued, Congress will initiate legal action against the BJP leaders. “We have already initiated appropriate legal action against the original broadcaster,” Ramesh said.
Zee News had apologised for the error on Saturday. Zee News anchor Rohit Ranjan said, “We presented the news with a misleading context in our show DNA and we regret it.”
कल हमारे शो DNA में राहुल गांधी का बयान उदयपुर की घटना से जोड़ कर ग़लत संदर्भ में चल गया था, ये एक मानवीय भूल थी जिसके लिए हमारी टीम क्षमाप्रार्थी हैं, हम इसके लिए खेद जताते हैं pic.twitter.com/YGs7kfbKKi
— Rohit Ranjan (@irohitr) July 2, 2022
Speaking to reporters over the attack on his office in Wayanad, Gandhi had said, “They are also children… it’s not a good thing to do. They have acted in an irresponsible way. I don’t have any anger or hostility towards them. They have done a silly thing.”
Gandhi, without referencing any specific incident, on Saturday tweeted in Hindi, “Propaganda and lies are the foundation of BJP-RSS. The whole of India knows the history of BJP-RSS, which shook the country in the fire of hatred. No matter what these traitors do to break India, the Congress will continue to do more work to unite it.”
दुष्प्रचार और झूठ ही भाजपा-RSS की नींव है।
देश को नफ़रत की आग में झोंक कर हाथ सेंकने वाली भाजपा-RSS का इतिहास पूरा हिंदुस्तान जानता है।
ये देशद्रोही चाहे जितना तोड़ने का काम कर लें, कांग्रेस उससे ज़्यादा भारत जोड़ने का काम करती रहेगी।
— Rahul Gandhi (@RahulGandhi) July 2, 2022
Source:indianexpress.com