A picture of a vandalised statue is being shared on social media with a claim that the statue belongs to a soldier from a scheduled caste.
“लोगो की मानसिकता देखो कहा तक गिर सकती है और हम विश्व गुरु बनने के सपने देख रहे है ऐसे लोगो के लिये एक शब्द तो बनता हैं | गुजरात में एक शेङ्युल कास्ट का जवान देश के लिये शहीद हुआ और ऊसका स्मारक खङा किया गया लेकिन इनसे यह बर्दाश्त नहीं हो पाया। लोग कह्ते हैं जातिवाद कहाँ है खत्म हो गया… साले फ़र्जी देश भक्त जो इस घटना से जुड़े हैं जिनका ये नीच काम है, ” the post claimed.
(Translation: Look at the mentality of the people, how far it has fallen and we are dreaming of becoming a world guru. A word is made for such people. In Gujarat, a soldier of a scheduled caste was martyred for the country and his memorial was set up but they could not tolerate it. People say where is casteism, it has ended… Fake patriots who are connected to this incident, whose deed is this. )
The Facebook posts can be seen here, here, here and here.
FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the post and found the claim to be misleading.
On putting the picture through Reverse Image Search, we found a tweet from 2018. According to the tweet, the statue is of Mahesh Pal Singh and is situated in Haryana.
इस देश मे आज भी”देशद्रोही”बसते हैं..जो इसी देश के “वीर सैनिकों” से इतनी”नफरत”करते हैं!
“हरियाणा”के”महेन्द्रगढ”के”घनौन्दा”के
“शहीद महेश पाल सिंह जी”की”प्रतिमा”
की”गर्दन काट”ले गया ।।
“सपूत”का इतना घोर”अपमान”करने वाला “दरिंदा”निश्चित ही”देशद्रोही”और”नाजायज” “औलाद”है.#जय_हिंद pic.twitter.com/96hrHti2in
— भारत कुमार(भारतीय) (@BK_Bhartiy2) July 29, 2018
Taking a cue from the above tweet, we ran a keyword and found a report by Punjab Kesari dated July 30, 2018, stating that a memorial is located in Dhanonda village in Haryana. And a man named Ajay was arrested by the police for beheading the statue of the martyr Mahesh Pal.
The report also stated that Ajay’s family had a fight with the sarpanch of the village and that’s why he indulged in this act.
We also found news reports on the same by Dainik Bhaskar and Amar Ujala.
The reports also state that Mahesh Pal was martyred in an encounter with terrorists in 1989. Mahesh Pal was a part of the Rajputana Rifles regiment and in 1988 he went to Sri Lanka as a part of the Shanti Sena. On 17 January 1989, Mahesh Pal was martyred in an encounter with terrorists in Jaffna sector. This statue of him was unveiled in January 2014.
Hence, from the above fact-check, it is clear that the viral post is misleading.
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