Kashmir Under Lockdown: The Cost Of Making A Phone Call

With a communications blackout still in place, residents of Srinagar find themselves cut off from their loved ones. A ground report from Srinagar.

Viral News India : A long queue snakes through most police stations in Kashmir. From young boys, women with children in tow to families, all wait in line to get a chance to make one call.

Alif Umair has been waiting for six hours at a police station in Downtown area. “I am calling an IT firm in Bangalore to let them know that I have accepted the job offer, which I hope I still have. They sent me the letter the eve of the lockdown but with the communication lines down, I couldn’t convey my acceptance.”

Umair says his parents insisted he leave and go to Bangalore and tell them personally. “I don’t want to leave till the situation settles down or at least the phone lines are working again. I am the only child and with no means to speak to them. I will be worried.”

With the communication black-out entering Day 12 on August 16, Kashmiris are losing hope. While the curfew remains in place, many shops raise their shutters post 7.30 pm when the forces withdraw.

“I waited four hours to make a call to my daughter in Delhi the other day. And was allowed to speak to her for only a minute. The policeman kept staring at me till I cut the call,” explains Saira Mir. Mir is 60-years-old and her daughter works at a beauty parlour in Delhi.. (Read Full Story)

Battling Allegations Of ‘Fake’ Protests: How Soura’s Residents Responded

Not wanting to leave anything to chance and to counter adverse reactions from the media and the govt, Soura’s residents came prepared for their next protest.

Fake News India : A week after protests in Soura, a village situated half an hour from Srinagar became national headlines, it now resembles a makeshift fortress.

While the main streets of Srinagar has seen heavy traffic movement, post the easing of curfew and restrictions on Saturday (August 17, 2019) the villagers in Soura are not willing to budge.

The villagers have placed barricades – from fallen trees guarding the width of the road, handmade steel meshes running along narrow streets, bricks blocking lanes and trenches dug up at critical points in the village.

“These are not just for the forces, it is for the Indian media too,” declares a resident.

The resentment against journalists, especially those working for Indian news organisations, runs deep.

The most recent trigger being the denial of any protest in Soura on August 9 by a section of the mainstream media..(Read Full Story)

Message Claiming Facebook Will Take Over Your Photos Is A Hoax

The bogus message has been revived several times over the past decade.

Fake News India : A seven year old hoax has been revived, which claims that Facebook will take over all the photos uploaded by users and make them public.

The message urges users to post a disclaimer as a status update on the social media platform, to avoid a take over of all their media by Facebook.

Old Hoax Goes Viral Again

On August 17, 2019, BOOM received an elaborate message, stating that from “today” onward Facebook will claim ownership of all the media posted by users, which will then become publicly available for viewing. The message also claims that the user can avoid this take over of content by posting a status update with the following statement: “FACEBOOK DOES NOT HAVE MY PERMISSION TO SHARE PHOTOS OR MESSAGES”.

Click here to view the post.

The message claims that Facebook will take ownership of the content shared by users. However, according to Facebook’s Terms and Conditions, “You (users) own the intellectual property rights (things such as copyright or trademarks) in any such content that you (users) create and share on Facebook and the other Facebook Company Products you use.”

Facebook also states, “Specifically, when you share, post or upload content that is covered by intellectual property rights on or in connection with our Products, you grant us a non-exclusive, transferable, sub-licensable, royalty-free and worldwide licence to host, use, distribute, modify, run, copy, publicly perform or display, translate and create derivative works of your content (consistent with your privacy and application settings).”

4-Year Old Video Of Imran Khan Losing His Cool Falsely Linked To Article 370

Viral posts claim Imran Khan lost his cool when no country supported Pakistan’s stance on India repealing Article 370.

Fact Check India : A four-year old video of Imran Khan losing his cool at a press conference is being circulated with a fake caption.

“Pakistan’s president Imran Khan loses his head as no country supported Pakistan on Article 370,” reads the caption with the old video.

(Hindi: धारा 370 पर किसी भी देश का साथ न मिलने पर पागल हुए पाक_PM_इमरान_खान देने लगे पत्रकारों को गालियाँ |)

The video shows Imran Khan appealing to reporters to be silent, but in vain.

Click here to watch the video.

Khan finally stands up and says, “silence.” At this point, the reporters fall in line. You can watch the video below and access its archived version here.

The original video is from June 2015 when Khan was not the prime minister of Pakistan. According to the report, Khan was addressing a press conference regarding the brutal killings of two brothers by Punjab (Pakistan) police personnel in Rawalpindi.

Imran Khan, then the president of Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, had also taken to Twitter to protest against the incident.

India Vs Pakistan: Fake Army Twitter Handles Spread Misinformation

BOOM found that several accounts impersonating Pakistani and Indian Army officers had sprung up on Twitter.

Fact Check India : Several fake accounts impersonating army officers from India and Pakistan have sprung up on Twitter over the past week amid rising tensions between both the countries over Kashmir.

A Twitter account named Lt. Asimuddin Zamal (@LtAsimZamal) tweeted that he is resigning with 100 rangers of his battalion.

He further claimed that the Imran Khan government was forcing the Pakistan army to violate human rights in Pakistan Occupied Kashmir (POK) and Balochistan.

Fake Indian and Pakistani Colonel accounts

Last week, a tweet from another Twitter account named Col Vijay Acharya with the handle name (@Archeie65), had gone viral.

In the tweet, the account claimed that he is Col Vijay Acharya from the Indian Army and he has decided to resign as Pakistan had killed 25 Indian soldiers of his unit. (

Click here to view the post.

‘Never Google Your Symptoms’: How A Swedish Doctor Is Battling Health Misinformation

Dr. Henrik Widegren mixes his love for medicine and music with quirky titled songs in his first English album and probably the world’s only album on medicine.

Fake News : Dr. Henrik Widegren, a Swedish voice doctor and an ENT specialist by day, moonlights as a musician writing songs on misinformation in the health space.

The now viral song ‘Never Google Your Symptoms’ from his debut album ‘Medical melodies and surgical symptoms’ is a satirical take on self-diagnosis.

Henrik has actively been a part of the Swedish theater and music scene. Prior to the English album, he released 3 Swedish albums. His current album has 13 songs all related to health and medicine.

The songs have quirky titles such as ‘Text messages from the ER’, ‘A Statistically Significant Love Song’, and ‘How to make a Baby.’

Never Google Your Symptoms

‘Never Google Your Symptoms’ released in April focuses on how people tend to google every small symptom that they observe and experience.

“If you google pain in your left arm, the search results in a heart attack alarm,” is one of the lines in the song.

The song suggests that the web search always churns out results of major illnesses which leads to fear among the person seeking information online that they are suffering from a major illness.

This phenomenon is medically called hypochondria.

Song → Never Google Your Symptoms Song

9-Month Revenue of Statue Of Unity At ₹52.9 Cr, Footfall Above 19 Lakh: RTI Reply

This RTI reply to BOOM also shows that while the statue is making an average monthly surplus of ₹2.8 crore, it will take 42 years to breakeven at the current revenue pace.

Fake News : The Statue of Unity has generated a revenue of ₹52.9 crores during a 9-month period from November 2018 to July 29, 2019 , the Sardar Sarovar Narmada Nigam Ltd. (SSNNL) told BOOM in a response to an RTI query. BOOM sought the information from the Gujarat state government body, asking them to provide details of the revenue, the costs incurred and the footfall at the monument.

In the same period, the Statue of Unity has witnessed a footfall of 19,36,582 persons, counting sales from bus tickets, entry tickets, express entry sales and selling tickets to access the viewing gallery. Further, the Statue of Unity has been operational for 232 days, and has witnessed an average daily footfall of 8,347 people, the RTI reply stated.

The footfall figures seem to have missed the mark if earlier projections by the body are considered. According to a report in The Print from November last year during the launch, Rajendra Kanungo, superintendent engineer at the SSNNL said that they expected an average footfall of 15,000 people daily. But the RTI figures reveal that the actual footfall may have just crossed 50% of the original projection. In early December last year, Gujarat Chief Secretary JN Singh had put the number of daily visitors for a few days at 30,000.

Full Report → Revenue of Statue Of Unity

Did The Home Ministry Warn Against Buying Poisonous Chinese Firecrackers?

The message asks Indians to boycott the hazardous firecrackers as China will be flooding the Indian market with them on behalf of Pakistan in the run-up to the festive season.

Fact Check: An old and fake message being circulated in the name of the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) proposing an official ban on supposed hazardous Chinese firecrackers has resurfaced.

The message claims that China is going to flood the Indian market with it during the festive season at the behest of Pakistan.

The message comes as India braces itself to enter peak festive season that will go on till December.

The message is attributed to one Biswajeet Mukherjee, supposedly an officer at the MHA,

BOOM spoke to the media and communication department of the MHA who were unaware of such a notification. BOOM also looked up Mukherjee as a senior investigating officer, and found no mention of him in the directory of the MHA listing all their officers.

On using keywords such as ‘Biswajit Mukherjee fireworks’, BOOM came across many articles by one Biswajit Mukherjee, who has commented on fireworks and pollution caused by them in various publications, with articles going back to 2009. (Click here to view the directory)

Fire In The Amazon: All You Need To Know

As the world’s largest rainforest gets ravaged by massive wildfires, BOOM lists down 5 major points about the Amazon that everyone should be aware of.

Fact Check: On August 19, 2019, a seemingly normal afternoon in the city of São Paulo in Brazil turned into a nightmarish scene, as the city was suddenly engulfed in darkness.

More then 2,500km away, large parts of the Amazon forest was ablaze with massive forest fires. According to a BBC report, the smoke it created, was carried by the wind all the way to Brazil’s most populous city.

The thick layer of smoke had settled above São Paulo, cutting out daylight, and turning it into night, leading to its residents posting surreal images of the city.

A record number of 72,843 instances of forest fires in the Amazon rainforest has been detected this year by Brazil’s National Institute for Space Research (abbreviated as INPE). This points to an 83% increase, compared to the same time period in 2018, and the highest since INPE started collecting data in 2013.

This led a massive outrage over social media, with hashtags like #PrayforAmazonas starting to trend on Twitter, worldwide.

Full Updates → Amazon RainForest Fire

Were students in Andhra forced by teachers to enact sex?

Several news channels and publications carried the news that the two teachers forced a Class IV male student and a Class I female student to pretend to be husband and wife and “do as their parents do”.

Andhra Pradesh News: Last week two primary school teachers in Andhra’s West Godavari district, were accused of allegedly asking two minor students to enact sexual intercourse. The District Education Officer has since given a clean-chit after conducting an investigation.

Several news channels and publications carried the news that the two teachers forced a Class IV male student and a Class I female student to pretend to be husband and wife and “do as their parents do”. The reports claimed that in this incident, the girl was injured. They further reported that learning about the incident, the teachers were roughed up by the villagers, and later asked to pay Rs 80,000 each as penalty. Taking cognizance of the incident, the State Human Rights Commission asked for an inquiry into the incident.

However, an inquiry conducted by the District Education Officer, CV Renuka on Saturday found that the news was fake, and a ‘deliberate’ campaign to defame both the teachers.

Speaking to TNM, the DEO said, “There’s absolutely no truth to the claims that several news outlets have carried. Firstly, the male student is in class 3, not class 4 as reported. We have conducted a thorough inquiry into the incident. We spoke to the children without the teachers (being present) so that the students don’t feel intimidated. However, they said that nothing of that sort had happened. By explaining about good touch and bad touch, we asked them if the teachers did anything as being reported, but the…(Read Full Story)