BJP has recently witnessed the killing of several workers in post-poll violence in West Bengal. A few days after the party's victory, a 23-year-old BJP worker was shot dead in West Bengal's Nadia district. A few days later, another BJP worker Sushil Mondal was putting up BJP flags in the village when three persons objected and, during an altercation, one of the three stabbed Mondal with a dagger in the abdomen as reported by News 18.

Most Recently, the body of another local BJP worker Ashish Singh, who was missing for two days, was found in Badhapukur, Malda as reported by India Today.

However, on 11th June the official Twitter account of the Indian National Congress had tweeted to create a perception that these killings are done BJP members themselves to gain sympathy in the state.

The tweet roughly translates to “In West Bengal, BJP has killed one of its activists, 11 Bajrang Dal activists arrested..! Don't be surprised! The only difference is that the BJP has kept the mask in Bengal. By the way, killing their own workers is very disgusting?”.

This was tweeted along with an attachment of a news article from a website called Daily Hunt which was published on June 4, 2018. This article’s title roughly translates to “In West Bengal, BJP killed their worker, 11 Bajrang Dal workers arrested”. The article then claims that BJP is trying to polarise votes and has sunk very low and has killed its own worker. It also says that 11 Bajrang Dal activists have been arrested for this act.

The official Facebook page of Congress Madhya Pradesh also shared the same article with a similar claim.

The arrest of 11 Bajrang Dal activists is unrelated

However, the killing of the BJP worker and 11 Bajrang Dal activists being arrested are completely unrelated.

Firstly, we noticed that the article was written in a very biased manner calling out BJP for its “dirty politics”. The article has not attached any sources. Therefore, we did a reverse image search of the image used in the article. We found an article by Aajtak which has used the same picture. According to the article, some people had attacked the BJP's party office with country bombs after a 27-year-old BJP activist called PV Sujit Singh was killed in front of his family members in Pappiniseri in Kannur district. It is also reported that 8 people have been detained in the case and BJP has alleged the involvement of CPI(M).

After looking up news on the murdered victim PV Sujit Singh, we found a report from The Hindu dated back to February 19th, 2016. According to that report, 6 men were arrested who are a part of the CPI(M) for being involved in the murder of Singh. The investigators of the case were probing on the murder being “instigated by political rivalry”.

Now, where did the information of 11 Bajrang Dal activists being arrested come from? This can be clarified by looking at an article by News Laundry. According to that, the news shared by Daily Hunt was published by Times of India, Deccan Chronicle in 2018 but was immediately removed later by them. This story was first published by ANI and later removed. News Laundry then enquired ANI as to why the article was taken down and they had said that it was because of “error in assessment” because the editorial team had mixed up two different stories. In actuality, the Bajrang Dal activists were arrested because of alleged violent behavior during Ram Navami and not for the murder of the BJP worker.

In conclusion, the news spread by Daily Hunt and Congress about BJP killing its own worker is absolutely false because this fake news has been framed from completely different stories. It is also to be noted that all of the stories that were mixed up in that article are all dated back to 2016 and 2018 respectively. Thus, not only is the news misleading and fake, but it is also outdated.