Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
Claim:
Amit Shah was born in Chicago.
Quote this tweet with the most jaw-dropping fact you learned in 2019.
We’ll go first.
Fact: Amit Shah was born in Chicago.
— India Wants To Know – Quiz Show (@IWTKQuiz) January 2, 2020
Verification:
Twitter user ‘India Wants To Know – Quiz Show’ who goes by the handle @IWTKQuiz has claimed that Amit Shah was born in Chicago. To back the aforementioned claim, the user has produced a report published by The Telegraph.
All right, here is what I found @ Siri.https://t.co/oRDX1RWNm3 pic.twitter.com/kmBGp313e1
— India Wants To Know – Quiz Show (@IWTKQuiz) January 2, 2020
The tweet above contains a report published by The Telegraph which he has presented as source of his claim.
All the Modi men
The young women are in their tank tops and jeans; the men, hair gelled into spikes, peer at their screens wearing jazzy shirts. Plastered on the walls are pie charts, highlighting facts and figures that they need to keep on their fingertips. It’s not, as you would suspect, a call centre at work.
The report published in The Telegraph headlined, “All the Modi Men” further explains the details of PM Modi’s close aids. According to the report, “Amit Shah is the most important person in Modi’s brain trust.” The report, explaining Shah’s whereabouts and other details, states that ‘Shah was born in Chicago’.
The claim went viral on Social media and many users including Shehla Rashid raised a question on Amit Shah’s birth place.
Was @AmitShah born in Chicago? https://t.co/6uhx8z42hg
— Shehla Rashid (@Shehla_Rashid) January 2, 2020
Now, as we began to fact check this claim, first of all, we visited Amit Shah’s personal website and under ‘About’ section, one can read his short biography which is listed as Introduction on his website. The very first line of Introduction section on his website reads, “Amit Shah was born to Smt. Kusumben and Shri Anilchandra Shah, an affluent Gujarati family in the year 1964 in Mumbai.”
We further checked media reports for more information on the claim. We found a 2016 Hindustan Times interview with Amit Shah which describes the matter in details. As per the Shah’s interview with Patrick French, “Shah was born in Mumbai.” An excerpt of the interview is as follows, “Shah is regarded as the prime minister’s most trusted lieutenant. In 2014, a CBI court discharged him in a conspiracy case over police encounter killings in Gujarat, but he is still viewed by many with suspicion. “I was in gaol because of the vindictive politics of the Congress,” he says. “The court was honourable and quashed the charge.” One conspiracy theory attached to Amit Shah is that he is less Indian than he seems and, like Augie March, was born in Chicago. He knows the rumour. “I have never been to Chicago! Two of my sisters have been living there for 35 years, but not me. I have never in my life been to America!” He is a privileged son of the soil. “I was born in Mumbai into a prosperous family that came from the town of Mansa, which is around 50 km from Ahmedabad. My grandfather wanted my initial upbringing to be in the village.”
A detailed version of the interview can be viewed here.
The ‘Shah’ of BJP’s game plan who wants to alter India’s political culture
india Updated: Jul 17, 2016 12:58 IST It is not often you get to spend a Saturday evening with Amit Shah. Although he lives in an imposing Lutyens bungalow at the heart of the national capital, the BJP president has no affection for the networks of political, bureaucratic and cultural power that thread their way through the city.
From our findings it is evident that the claim made by the user is ‘False’.
Result: Misleading
Sources
- Google Search
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Authors
A self-taught social media maverick, Saurabh realised the power of social media early on and began following and analysing false narratives and ‘fake news’ even before he entered the field of fact-checking professionally. He is fascinated with the visual medium, technology and politics, and at Newschecker, where he leads social media strategy, he is a jack of all trades. With a burning desire to uncover the truth behind events that capture people's minds and make sense of the facts in the noisy world of social media, he fact checks misinformation in Hindi and English at Newschecker.
