Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become essential today than ever before.
A video claiming that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi wrote a long letter to Nepal’s Rastriya Swatantra Party President Rabi Lamichhane is going viral on TikTok. Newschecker found the claim to be misleading.
TikTok user @jagadish10000 posted a video showing images of Rastriya Swatantra Party President Rabi Lamichhane and India’s Prime Minister Rabi Lamichhane. Text superimposed on the video reads, “Callous person like Modi [India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi] has sent a long letter to Rabi Lamichhane. And the letter became viral within a few minutes. For the first time India has been terrified.”
An audio accompanying the video says, “Any trying to mesh with Rabi Lamichhane is like putting your hands into a wasp’s nest.”
The video posted on February 12 has garnered 12k likes, and 169 shares until the time of publishing this article.
Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) President Rabi Lamichhane resigned from the posts of Deputy Prime Minister and Home Minister on January 28 after the Supreme Court declared his citizenship invalid and revoked his election to the House of Representatives from Chitwan-2.
Before announcing his party’s withdrawal from the government on February 5, Lamichhane had briefly spoken in Hindi calling on India’s Prime Minister Modi to desist from employing any agent in between Nepal and India. “You might be thinking that Nepal-India relations have taken a new height but this is not true, and if you want Nepal-India relations to improve you should talk directly with the concerned authority and not through any agents,” Lamichhane had said at the press meet.
Fact Check /Verification
To check the authenticity of the claim made in the viral video, Newschecker conducted a search for the news about Prime Minister Modi’s letter to Rastriya Swatantra Party President Rabi Lamichhane. However, we didn’t find any letter issued by Modi in the name of Lamichhane that had allegedly gone viral.
Then, we reached out to Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP) chief whip Santosh Pariyar, who confirmed to us that no such letter had been issued in the name of his party’s president Lamichhane.
Further, we took a keyframe of Prime Minister Narendra Modi from the viral video and conducted a search which threw up several results. On checking an article published on The Print online, we found that the image showed PM Modi during the launch of Swachh Bharat Mission-Urban 2.0 and AMRUT 2.0 in New Delhi on 1 October 2021.
As the audio sounded familiar to us, we searched the YouTube using keywords ‘Rabi Lamichhane Ram Prasad Uprety’ and found a video published on Anamol Media on February 6. We found that the audio used in the viral video exactly matched the interview of Dr Ram Prasad Uprety, who is known for his opinions about burning political issues.
Our findings showed that the image used in the viral video is edited and Prime Minister Narendra Modi has not issued any letter in the name of RSP chief Rabi Lamichhane.
Conclusion
The viral video claiming that India’s Prime Minister Narendra Modi has issued a viral letter in the name of RSP Chief Rabi Lamichhane is misleading.
Result: False
Sources
Direct Contact with Rastriya Swatantra Party chief whip Santosh Pariyar
Anmol Media /YouTube
Power Media Network /YouTube
The Print online
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Sanjeeb Phuyal is the Nepali Editor of Newschecker based in Kathmandu, Nepal. He brings over a decade of experience writing and editing news. In his previous stint, he worked as online editor for The Kathmandu Post. With the growth of social media platforms—and the ever-growing competition amongst media outlets to churn out breaking news, he feels that fact-checking every piece of information has become essential today than ever before.
