Rumour

A Facebook user Hitesh Singla posted a paper cutting in the official Facebook page group of Aam Aadmi Party managed by Delhi CM Arvind Kejriwal. The headline of the report reads “Chori aur munafakhori desh ke baniyon ki aadat hai: Amit Shah“ which can be roughly translated to "Cheating and profiteering is the habit of Baniya community in this country". 

The same screenshot has been shared by many individuals on Facebook and Twitter and going viral on Whatsapp as well. A user Nitin Jain wrote "I want to register my protest against Amit shah.... He is self fraud man and blaming sons of Aggarwal Samaj...Demand action against him.. In every part of India. He tried to insult those who are biggest tax payers of india. Amit shah you need to see result in 2019 what Bahiya did for nation."

Another AAP supporter tweeted the same clip on Twitter.

Our Investigation

The News seems a bit strange because Amit Shah himself belongs to the Baniya community. So, we started investigating the clip.

As per the paper clip, Amit Shah made the statement while addressing a rally in Bundi, Rajasthan. We searched for his speech in Bundi Rajasthan but couldn't find any instance where he used such language for the Baniya community.

Since the paper clip doesn't provide any information about the newspaper from which it was taken, it is difficult to find the online version of the report but still, we did a keyword search on Google but didn't get any result which can verify whether Amit Shah actually said it or not. You can view the result here:

It is impossible that Amit Shah made such a huge statement about his own community and none of the media houses reported it. So, we will consider the paper clipping to be fake.

Another section in the clip claims that Modi had called the trader community thieves during demonetisation but Modi had also never said anything like that.

Fact

No, BJP President Amit Shah and PM Modi didn't call Baniyas thieves. The paper clip being circulated on social media is fake.