Fact Check: Ranjan Gogoi did not tweet about offering namaz on whatsapp group, viral post is fake

New Delhi (Vishvas News). Users on social media are sharing a screenshot of a tweet in the name of retired Chief Justice and now Rajya Sabha MP Ranjan Gogoi. The Twitter handle of the screenshot has a photo of Ranjan Gogoi and the tweet asks Muslims to offer prayers through the WhatsApp group. Vishvas News in its investigation found this tweet to be fake. Ranjan Gogoi has not made any such tweet.

What’s in the viral post?

Facebook user Sk Khuntwal shared a viral screenshot, in which it was written – “If you can give divorce over the phone. So why don’t you read Namaz on WhatsApp group”.

Investigation

Starting our investigation, we first started searching this tweet by the name of Ranjan Gogoi on Twitter. In our search, we could not find any such official tweet by Ranjan Gogoi. Now we started searching the Twitter handle of the viral screenshot @SGBJP on Twitter. And we got a suspended account of this name. That is, this fake account has already been suspended by Twitter.

Continuing our investigation, we took the help of Google News search and tried to know whether Ranjan Gogoi has made any statement similar to the viral tweet. We did not find any such article in our search, which verifies this claim. If indeed Ranjan Gogoi had given such a controversial tweet or statement, it would have been in the news.

Now we searched the viral screenshot through Google reverse image, in the search we could not find this screenshot even on any reliable news websites.

Vishvas News contacted Dainik Jagran’s special correspondent Mala Dixit to confirm the viral post. She told us that this is a fake account of Ranjan Gogoi and he has not tweeted any such.

There are many parody accounts on Twitter in the name of Ranjan Gogoi and screenshots of tweets often go viral on Facebook or other social media handles. Vishvas News has fact-checked the fake tweets made in the name of Ranjan Gogoi even before this. Fact check stories can be read here.

Now it was the turn of the social scanning of the Facebook user who shared the viral fake screenshot. We came to know that Facebook user Sk Khuntwal is a resident of Indore, Madhya Pradesh. And few fake posts have been shared from this profile before.