Authors
Sabloo Thomas has worked as a special correspondent with the Deccan Chronicle from 2011 to December 2019. Post-Deccan Chronicle, he freelanced for various websites and worked in the capacity of a translator as well (English to Malayalam and Malayalam to English). He’s also worked with the New Indian Express as a reporter, senior reporter, and principal correspondent. He joined Express in 2001.
Pankaj Menon
Claim
Video of Congress candidate from Thrissur, K Muralidharan, the son of former Chief Minister late K Karunakaran, campaigning in Thrissur with the Pakistan flag. The claim insinuates that the Flag of Pakistan was used in the campaign.
Many other users also shared similar claims on Twitter. The archived version of the tweets can be seen here, here, here, and here.
Fact
Newschecker closely analysed the video and noticed the watermark in Malayalam “Kondotty Pachapada.” Taking this as a hint, we searched Kondotty Pachapada’s page and found that the profile had shared this video on April 19, 2019. The description in Malayalam read, “Kolarajan to go to jail and Muralidharan to the parliament from Vadakara. Youth League’s children in full energy during K Muralidharan’s campaign rally.” The term Kolarajan was used to refer to P Jayarajan who was the opponent of Muraleedharan in the election.
We then did a keyword search on Facebook using the words from the post’s description and found that a similar post was also shared on April 19, 2019, by a profile named MK Sawad. The video also used the same caption as that of Kondotty Pachapada’s page.
Thus we find that this picture is of 2019 when Muralidharan contested for the Lok Sabha from Vadakara, which he eventually won.
In the video, we can see people waving green flags which, social media users suggested, is the national flag of Pakistan. We noticed that Pakistan’s national flag has a white stripe, but the one in the video does not have one. The flag in the video is of the political party Indian Union Muslim League which is in alliance with the Congress in Kerala.
Result: Missing Context
Sources
Facebook post by Kondotty Pachapada on April 19, 2019
Facebook post by M K Savad on April 19, 2019
Indian Union Muslim League Website
Encyclopedia Britannica
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Authors
Sabloo Thomas has worked as a special correspondent with the Deccan Chronicle from 2011 to December 2019. Post-Deccan Chronicle, he freelanced for various websites and worked in the capacity of a translator as well (English to Malayalam and Malayalam to English). He’s also worked with the New Indian Express as a reporter, senior reporter, and principal correspondent. He joined Express in 2001.
