A purported video clip of the ‘Zee News’ channel is being shared on social media claiming that Prime Minister Narendra Modi was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch police for allegedly making obscene or pornographic films. This video shows former ‘Zee News’ journalist Sudhir Chaudhary reporting the arrest of Narendra Modi in a pornography case. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: ‘Zee News’ video clip showing Sudhir Chaudhary reporting the arrest of Narendra Modi in a pornography case.
Fact: The video shared in the post is a doctored one. This video was created by editing a ‘Zee News’ report related to the arrest of Mumbai businessman Raj Kundra. Raj Kundra was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch Police in July 2021 for allegedly producing pornographic films. This video was created by a meme-creating page named ‘sonu_shitposting’. Prime Minister Narendra Modi was never arrested in a pornography case. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When we searched to check whether Prime Minister Narendra Modi was arrested in any pornography case as stated in the video, we could not find any such reports.
On observing the video carefully, one could see the ‘sonu_shitposting’ watermark at the bottom left of the video. On searching for the details of the video using these keywords, we found the same video posted on the ‘sonu_shitposting’ Instagram page on 13 October 2021. ‘sonu_shitposting’ described itself as a backup page for the ‘@sonusood_meme_service’ Instagram page. ‘@sonusood_meme_service’ published several similar memes and satirical videos on their Instagram page.
When we searched for further sources, we found that the video shared in the post was created by editing a video published by ‘Zee News’ related to the arrest of Mumbai Businessman Raj Kundra. Raj Kundra was arrested by the Mumbai Crime Branch Police in July 2021 for allegedly producing pornographic films. Reporting the arrest of Raj Kundra in a pornography case, from 2:51 minutes of the video, Sudhir Chaudhary said, “kal raath mumbai police ke crime branch ne raj kundra ko ashleel filme banane ke aarop me giraphtar kiya” (when translated from Hindi to English: “Yesterday ,Mumbai Crime Branch Police arrested Raj Kundra on the allegations of producing pornographic films”). This video was created by editing the audio of the original ‘Zee News’ video related to the arrest of Raj Kundra.
To sum it up, this purported ‘Zee News’ video clip reporting the arrest of Narendra Modi in a pornography case is a doctored one & fake.
