Fact Check: Viral Post Claiming Nationwide Lockdown Imposed From April 15 To 30 Is Fake

Vishvas News (New Delhi): A post doing rounds on social media claims with a screenshot of a news channel that total lockdown has been imposed in India from April 15th to 30th.

Vishvas News investigated and found the post to be fake. The fake post was created using the logo and screenshot of TV9 Bharatvarsh.

Claim

A Facebook user named Sandeep Singh posted a fake screenshot on April 14, claiming that the total lockdown was being announced from April 15 to 30 in India.

View the archived version of the Facebook post here.

Investigation

Vishvas News observed the screenshot carefully. It was written: ‘Who should be protected from the virus … now lockdown is the solution?’The post is circulated in the form of a screenshot using the TV9 Bharatvarsh logo. We investigated and found this sentence in a report dated April 12, 2021. This sentence was used in the first few seconds of the news. You can see it here.

During the investigation, we came to know that the screenshot is morphed, as the writing style was different from the one used in the TV9 Bharatvarsh channel.

We also found the name of a YouTube channel called Real Education. We found that the morphed screenshot of a news channel was used on this channel on April 13, 2021. A video was made by compiling different reports with it. We found many misleading videos on this channel named Real Education.

We further investigated by contacting the editor of TV9 Bharatvarsh. He told that it is completely fake. No such news was shown on the channel.

Apart from night curfew, weekend curfew has also been imposed in many states of the country.

Vishvas News did the social screening of Facebook user Sandeep Singh, who posted the fake screenshot. We found that the user is a resident of Rewari. He has more than 900 friends.