Viral image claiming the death of a rickshaw puller due to starvation is false
An image of a rickshaw puller lying upside down on a hand-pulled rickshaw is being shared on Facebook and Twitter. The man’s legs are on the rickshaw, whereas his torso hangs off it.
Claim: “मैंने पहले ही कहा था साहब, कोरोना क्या है, भूख से मर जाएंगे पहले. “
(Translation: I had already said Sir, what is corona, hunger will kill us first.)
This post by Ausaf Ahmad Farooqui has more than 20,000 shares.
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The post was widely shared on Twitter as well.
@kunalkamra88 pic.twitter.com/a5TRnytqgk
— True Indian (@TrueInd26978997) May 4, 2020
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गरीब किसान मजदूर अपने परिवार से हुए दूर ,
कोरोना वायरस के बहाने मजदूरों को किया मजबूर,
पूंजीपतियों को फ्लाइट से शिफ्टिंग की व्यवस्था ,गरीब किसानों के बसों की भी नहीं, बहुजन क्रांति मोर्चा#निषेध_आंदोलन_की_सफलता #निषेध_आंदोलन_की_सफलता pic.twitter.com/RxHRSE9ViB— प्रदेश अध्यक्ष भारत मुक्ति मोर्चा, मध्यप्रदेश (@DalmiyaSaudan) May 3, 2020
(Translation: Poor farmers and labourers are far from their families, made labourers helpless in the name of coronavirus. Arrangements made for the rich to move home by flights, not even buses arranged for poor farmers)
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Truth
By using reverse image search and setting a time filter on the results, we found that this image has been on the internet since 2017. The oldest post containing this image was on a website called steemit.com, a blogging and social media website. It was uploaded by user Rituparna Ghosh, titled “The ultimate drunkard” in 2017. The caption, “see the sleeping posture of the rickshaw puller after getting drunk” suggests that the rickshaw puller was inebriated and may have passed out.
(Link to the original post)
The national lockdown was announced on 25 March, 2020 and this image has nothing to do with the lockdown. The text, which is a created context for the image, was edited onto the image and shared with the wrong claims.
