‘Ordinary tax paying citizen’ and infamous purveyor of fake news Rishi Bagree’s Twitter account was suspended on Thursday.
Civil servant Ashish Joshi tweeted that it took seven months of continuous reporting of objectionable tweets for the social media platform to finally take action against Bagree.
It has taken 7 months of relentless reporting of objectionable tweets of @rishibagree.
And I request each one of you who believes in civility of discussion {objective of @jack @Twitter } to start reporting each objectionable tweet to @twitter
— Ashish Joshi (@acjoshi) April 18, 2019
Bagree had over 99,000 followers which included top BJP political leaders, ministers and Prime Minister Narendra Modi himself.
He has been repeatedly caught spreading falsities, doctored images, misinformation and fake news through his social media profile, trying to create communal tensions and spread islamophobia among his followers.
Arjun Siddharth reporting for Alt News has documented the web of lies that Bagree had spun on his Twitter account. Some of these include:
- A a doctored Times of India (TOI) article in which he altered the headline to suit his own intentions.
TOI had later tweeted out the picture of the article with the original headline:
The headline of our original story (pic) was distorted by a mischief monger using photoshop. Our legal team will take action. pic.twitter.com/lY0EweG7NJ
— Times of India (@timesofindia) July 8, 2017
- In May 2015, he had used the picture of a rail-roko protest in Shamli, U.P. for an alleged incident of harassment, to falsely claim that a Muslim mob had forcefully stopped a train and taken Hindus hostage, threatening to kill them.
Also Read: Social Media Platforms to Deploy Fact Checkers to Curb Fake News: Election Commission
- He spread the rumour that secret GPS enabled nano chips were embedded in the newly minted Rs. 2,000 notes released after demonetisation.
Campaign against critical thinkers:
Bagree’s posts also targeted journalists and public personalities who are critical of the Modi-led government and its policies. He has stoked old baseless rumours that Barkha Dutt is the third wife of Haseeb Drabu, who is supposedly the chairman of ‘Jammu Kashmir bank.’
He had also shared a fake satirical letter that he claimed to have been a real comeback to Arundhati Roy’s concern over the human rights of terrorists.
Twitter was quick to react to Bagree’s suspension from the online domain:
The Twitter account of Rishi Bagree, a serial disseminator of disinformation, has been disabled. And about time too. As the old saying goes, better late than never.
— ParanjoyGuhaThakurta (@paranjoygt) April 17, 2019
My fave @rishibagree memory was his thread on India’s WW2, in which every single claim was false, but which ended: ‘All data are well documented’. https://t.co/EgZbJBje6L
— Raghu Karnad (@rkarnad) April 18, 2019
Agree. Kudos @acjoshi and he defended me and Ravish when we were facing the worst onslaught after our numbers were leaked by BJP IT Cell. https://t.co/GKEVBQZKYZ
— Abhisar Sharma (@abhisar_sharma) April 18, 2019
Ashish Joshi has been fighting against fake news and hate mongering on Twitter for some time and has had to pay dearly for his stance.
Earlier this year, he was suspended by the Modi-led BJP government without any explanation or summon, a day after he had filed a complaint with the Delhi Police commissioner, against a hateful, threatening video uploaded by Delhi MLA Kapil Mishra.
The video called on people to attack prominent critics of the Modi regime including Prashant Bhushan, Kavita Krishnan, Swara Bhaskar, Shehla Rashid and journalist Barkha Dutt.