By: Rahul Adhikari
November 11 2022
False: Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met with an activist who shouted "Pakistan Zindabad" at a rally in Bangalore.
Share Article:
Fact-Check
The Verdict False
Rahul Gandhi is seen meeting a student named Miva Jolly in the viral post. The activist who raised the slogans is Amulya Leona.
Claim ID 36638eec
Context
A video is being shared on social media claiming that Congress leader Rahul Gandhi met a protester who shouted slogans of "Pakistan Zindabad" at a rally against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) in Bengaluru on February 20, 2022. The short clip shows a collage of two visuals. On the left, Gandhi is seen standing with a girl. While a girl can be seen shouting "Pakistan Zindabad" in the other visual. Gandhi is currently running a campaign known as "The Bharat Jodo Yatra," and the logo is visible in the video.
In Fact
The girl who shouted the slogans was Amulya Leona, a journalism student and activist from the Chikmagalur district of Karnataka. Originally published by The Quint, the viral video depicts Leona shouting the slogans of Pakistan Zindabad and Hindustan Zindabad at an anti-CAA rally in Bengaluru. She was charged with sedition, promoting enmity, and public mischief following the protest and was granted bail in June 2020 after being in prison for 110 days.
However, the girl photographed with Rahul Gandhi is not Amulya Leona. This viral photo of Rahul Gandhi was found on the Instagram account @miva_andreleo, which belongs to Kerala Student Union (KSU) leader and engineering student Miva Jolly, from Ernakulam, Kerala. We also found a video of her meeting Rahul Gandhi on her Facebook profile. In the minute-long video, Jolly can be seen dodging the bodyguards to meet Rahul Gandhi before walking with the Congress leader for a brief time.
The same claim went viral in September 2022 after this photo surfaced online, prompting Jolly to clarify the situation on Facebook. Originally written in Malayalam, the translated caption reads, "I had the opportunity to walk with Rahul Gandhi in Ernakulam during the Bharat Jodo Yatra. I took a photo with him. The beloved leader shared that photo on his Facebook page. The Sangh Parivar is spreading propaganda through social media, claiming that the photo is of a girl who shouted "Pakistan zindabad" at an event somewhere in North India. This is all I can tell you."
Digital platform The News Minute reported that this image was also falsely shared by BJP worker Priti Gandhi, claiming Miva Jolly was Amulya Leona. Hibi Eden, Congress MP for Ernakulam, filed a police complaint against Gandhi for spreading fake news. Moreover, Congress MP Jairam Ramesh tweeted that five cases have been registered against the BJP for spreading this narrative, sharing the police complaints in the tweets.
The Verdict
An image of Rahul Gandhi meeting a student from Kerala is being falsely shared as meeting Amulya Leona. Gandhi was meeting an engineering student named Miva Jolly, as posted on Jolly's personal Instagram account. Therefore, we have marked this claim as false.
