Raja Singh’s sister has not accepted Islam as being claimed

A post with a girl’s photo is being shared on Facebook with the claim that she is the sister of Telangana BJP MLA Raja Singh and recently, converted herself into Islam. Let’s try to check the authenticity of the news in the post.

Claim: Raja Singh’s sister Maya Devi has accepted Islam.

Fact: The girl in the photo is Athira/Ayesha, a Kerala girl who got converted into Islam two years back. She has no connection with Raja Singh. A similar claim which went viral on social media four years back was condemned by Raja Singh previously. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.    

When the girl’s photo is cropped and ran through Google Reverse Image Search, a ‘The News Minute’ article with the same photo can be found in the search results. According to that article, the girl in the photo is Athira (aka Ayesha – converted name), who accepted Islam two years back in Kerala. She has no connection with the MLA Raja Singh.

Also, when searched on Google with the keywords ‘Raja Singh sister accepted Islam’, another ‘The News Minute’ article published four years back can be found in the search result. According to that article, in 2015, Raja Singh filed a defamation case against a newspaper which published that Raja Singh’s niece accepted Islam without verifying the facts.

The image in the post shows that the news was published by ‘The News Minute’ on June 6^th, 2019. But no such news was found on the The News Minute website.

To sum it up, a Kerala Hindu girl’s conversion to Islam is being falsely shared as Raja Singh’s sister conversion.

Update: TNM has denied publishing any such article and has published a clarification on the spread of the fake post on their name.

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