Fact Check: Fake claim of lockdown going viral amid rising cases of Covid-19 in India

New Delhi (Vishvas News): The cases of coronavirus infections are again increasing in the country. Meanwhile, posts are being shared on social media regarding a nationwide lockdown. It is being claimed that there will be a complete lockdown in India from 12 midnight while a lockdown has been implemented in Delhi.

Vishvas News investigated and found the viral claim to be fake. This type of claim has gone viral in the past as well, which has been verified by Vishvas News.

Claim:

Vishvas News received this claim on its tipline number +919599299372. The message read:

“Bharat Bandh, complete lockdown from 12 midnight
Complete lockdown implemented in Delhi.”

Investigation:

To verify the viral claim, we first searched Google with keywords, but could not find any news that could confirm the viral claim. This message was shared by the media in 2020. In a video uploaded on India TV’s YouTube channel on March 24, 2020, it has been said that from 12 o’clock midnight, a 21-day lockdown will be implemented in the entire country.

Dainik Jagran had also published news on March 24, 2020 that Prime Minister Narendra Modi has announced a 21-day lockdown across the country to deal with the coronavirus outbreak.

After this, we checked the website, the link to which has been shared in the viral screenshot. We could not find any viral news reports on this, but did find some news claiming lockdown. One of these has been printed on April 14 and the other on January 7.

For more confirmation on this, we spoke to Neelu Ranjan, reporter of Dainik Jagran covering the Ministry of Home Affairs. He says, “There’s nothing like that. This is fake.”