Fact Check: No, Rahul Gandhi didn't say 'We have turned poor people...', viral video doctored
A video of Rahul Gandhi claiming, "We have turned the poor of the country billionaires," is rapidly going viral on Facebook. However, upon fact-checking, this video has been found to be entirely fake.
India TV Fact Check: Every day, speeches by politicians are widely circulated on social media. Some of these speeches are controversial, and others contain false claims. However, there are some videos that are entirely edited and manipulated before being shared. The truth behind such videos can only be revealed through fact-checking. One such video features Congress leader Rahul Gandhi delivering a speech. The caption of this video claims that Rahul Gandhi said in his speech said, "We have turned the poor of the country billionaires." Upon fact-checking, it was found that this video is entirely fake.
What is going viral?
The video was posted on September 4, 2022, by a user named 'Satya Samvad' on Facebook. The caption accompanying Rahul Gandhi's video reads, "We made billionaires out of the poor by giving them billions! We're not crazy, our minds are messed up." (The caption is roughly translated from Hindi). This video has been viewed by more than 2,000 people and has received over 150 likes. However, it's important to note that the video and caption are entirely fake.
When we listened carefully to this 13-second video, appears to show Rahul Gandhi saying, "Lakho karoro rupay... lakho karoro rupay hamne... garib janta... ko compensation mein diya... lakho karod rupee... arabpati bana diye..." This video has been shared by several users with similar claims.
India TV Fact Check
When we watched this 13-second video of Rahul Gandhi carefully, it was clear from the banner in the background that this is a video of a speech given during a Halla Bol rally and the year 2022 is also seen written along with it. If you look carefully, Chhattisgarh Chief Minister Bhupesh Baghel is also seen near Rahul Gandhi. Now we had three important keywords to analyze the video. So we started searching on Google with the keywords 'Rahul Gandhi + Halla Bol Rally + 2022'.
As soon as we entered these keywords into Google, we found several videos. During this search, we came across the full video of the 'Hulla Bol Rally' uploaded on the official YouTube channel of the 'Indian National Congress' on September 4, 2022. The title of this video was "Hulla Bol Rally on Inflation." The complete video was 2 hours and 12 minutes long. Therefore, we skipped through all the speeches to focus on Rahul Gandhi's speech.
In this video, at 1 hour and 48 minutes (1:48:28) into the speech, Rahul Gandhi appears to be saying, "You see... Narendra Modi implemented demonetization... Did the poor benefit from demonetization? Money was taken out of the pockets of the poor... You told the poor... it was a fight against black money... And then, a few months later, you saw that the money was taken from your pockets, lakhs of crores of rupees...the loans of the country's biggest industrialists were waived off... They won't forgive the farmers' loans...They brought three black laws against the farmers... They said these laws are for the benefit of the farmers... If these laws were for the benefit of the farmers, then why are the farmers standing across the country? Why are they on the streets? These three laws were not for the farmers... These three laws were for just two industrialists..." We carefully listened to this entire speech, and at no point did Rahul Gandhi say that they had turned the poor into billionaires.
Following this, we searched Google for information about Rahul Gandhi's Halla Bol rally, and we came across a news article from Dainik Bhaskar. This article also mentioned Rahul Gandhi's speech from the same rally. The Dainik Bhaskar article was published a year ago. In the fourth paragraph of the article, it was written, "Modiji implemented demonetization. Did this benefit the poor? He took money out of the pockets of the poor. He told the poor that it was a fight against black money. A few months later, you saw that lakhs of crores of rupees were taken out of your pockets... the loans of the country's biggest industrialists were forgiven." In this article as well, Rahul Gandhi has not said anything about the claims being made with the viral video.
Rahul Gandhi did Halla Bol rally
The Congress party had announced the start of the "Bharat Jodo Yatra" from September 7, 2022. Prior to this yatra, on September 4, the Congress organized a major rally at Delhi's Ramlila Maidan, addressing issues such as inflation, unemployment, and GST, and also targeted the Modi government on matters related to Adani and Ambani during this event. Rahul Gandhi was part of this rally and criticized the Modi government on various issues.
What came out in the fact check?
When India TV's fact-checking team investigated the viral video, it was found to be completely edited. We also listened to Rahul Gandhi's actual speech and checked related news reports, but there was no mention of this statement by Rahul Gandhi anywhere.
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