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A trimmed version of PM Modi’s speech is viral, claiming he admitted that he thieved during his childhood days

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A video is viral in which PM Modi can be heard saying “जब मैं छोटी चोरी करता था उस दिन अगर मेरी मां ने रोका होता तो मैं इतना बड़ा लूटेरा न बनता।

Translation – “Had my mother restrained me, back in the day when I used to commit petty theft then I would not have become such a big robber.”

Claim: People across various social media platforms are sharing the video with the claim that PM Modi has confessed to stealing in his childhood and the video is getting plenty of engagement on various social media platforms.

Facebook

The video is going viral on Facebook with the caption that reads “Had my mother restrained me, back in the day when I used to commit petty theft then I would not have become such a big robber.” And not only it is being shared on a large scale but people are in fact sharing it with the claim that PM Modi admitted that he used to steal during his childhood days.

 

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Even the Official Page of Chhattisgarh Youth Congress posted the video on its official Facebook page and it was viewed a whopping 22 thousand times at the time of writing this news report.

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Twitter

The video has taken the microblogging site by storm too. Twitterati tweeted the video with the same caption “Had my mother restrained me, back in the day when I used to commit petty theft then I would not have become such a big robber.”  A Twitter user tweeted the video adding “Listen the Janitor is not only a thieve but also a big robber” to the viral caption.

 

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Truth

The claim that PM Modi has confessed to stealing is delusive. It’s merely a part of a fictional story he was telling people in his speech.

Using the InVid Verification tool, we broke the video into several keyframes and did a reverse image search to find the claim’s veracity being circulated with the video. We found the complete version of the nine seconds long viral clip on PM Modi’s official Youtube channel.

Watch the official speech video below from 39:30 minutes

 

The video was originally shot when PM Modi was addressing a massive rally ahead of the fourth phase of elections in West Bengal’s Siliguri in April this year. The 57:19 mins long video was streamed live on his official Youtube channel on April 10, 2021. The description of the video reads “Addressing a massive rally ahead of fourth phase of election in West Bengal’s Siliguri,” Prime Minister Narendra Modi today said, “The entire North Bengal has announced that TMC government is going and BJP government is coming. Today, the entire nation is proud to see the willpower of the people of Bengal. This willpower is of the ‘Ashol Poriborton’. This willpower is the power of ‘Sonar Bangla’.”

We went through the entirety of the video and found out that although PM Modi had spoken the same words as can be heard in the viral clip, he was not talking about himself rather was giving a reference to folklore that he had heard while growing up.

So, in the video, from 39:35 minutes onwards till 40:52 minutes, PM Modi says,

“Brothers and sisters, when we were kids, we all heard the story of an infamous robber who was sentenced to death. When he was asked about his last wish the robber voiced his desire of meeting his mother. The government arranged for the meeting. When the robber met his mother he leapt towards her and bit her nose before being hanged. When people asked him that why he bit his mother’s nose, the robber replied that “Had my mother restrained me, back in the day when I used to commit petty theft then I would not have become such a big robber.”

Hence, after watching the entire video it became evident that PM Modi was not talking about himself but was rather talking about a fictitious character, who was sentenced to death because he thieved.

Therefore, after analyzing all the aspects we concluded that the viral clip is just a cropped section of PM Modi’s address in Siliguri from April 2021, it is misleading, and is being disseminated with a false claim.

 

 

 

 


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Rupesh Kumar

A Journalism student at Symbiosis Institute of Media & Communication, who writes out of sheer avidity and has a nose for news, seeking to leverage skills to contribute to high-quality journalism.