Fictional character ‘BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay’ revived with a new set of posts on social media - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
May 18, 2020
A video is being shared on social media with a claim that BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay is involved in the incident seen in the video. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Video of BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay shooting an effigy of Mahatma Gandhi.
Fact: There is no BJP MLA with the name – ‘Anil Upadhyay’. Many random videos are being posted on social media falsely attributing them to a fictitious character – ‘BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay’. In the video posted on social media, the woman shooting at Mahatma Gandhi’s effigy is Hindu Mahasabha National Secretary Pooja Shakun. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Through reverse image search, the same video was found to be uploaded by ‘Times of India’. As per the news video, the woman seen shooting the effigy of Mahatma Gandhi is Hindu Mahasabha National Secretary Pooja Shakun. She was later arrested by the UP Police for her actions.
When searched on the ‘My Neta’ website about ‘Anil Upadhyay’, it was found that there is no BJP MLA with the name – ‘Anil Upadhyay’. But there were two persons with that name- one is Dr. Anil Upadhyay, a leader from the Bahujan Samaj Party (BSP) in Rajasthan and the other is Anil Kumar Upadhyay, an independent candidate from Uttar Pradesh.
Another image (archived) showing a semi-naked man groping a woman is also being shared claiming that the man in the photo is BJP MLA, Anil Upadhyay. But as we have found earlier, there is no BJP MLA with the name ‘Anil Upadhyay’.
Earlier, when several other videos claiming to be related to ‘BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay’ were shared on social media, FACTLY has debunked them through this fact check.
To sum it up, the woman shooting Mahatma Gandhi’s effigy in the video is Hindu Mahasabha national secretary Pooja Shakun. Also, there is no BJP MLA with the name ‘Anil Upadhyay’.
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