By Srijit Das
A video where former Chief Minister of Maharashtra, Uddhav Thackeray can be seen speaking about an Indian army soldier who sacrificed his life for the country, is being cropped and peddled as the Shiv Sena (UBT) chief calling the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb a martyr.
BOOM found that Thackeray, in the original video, was referring to an incident when terrorists in Jammu and Kashmir killed an Indian Army soldier named Aurangzeb in 2018.
The 30-seconds long video shows Thackeray saying, "...(he) sacrificed his life for the country. If I now say that he was my brother then you will ask do you know his name? His name was Aurangzeb. He might be from the Muslim community, but he sacrificed his life for the country. What is being said... Bharat Mata Ki Jay... he sacrificed his life for that... was he not our brother?"
Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and member of Maharashtra Legislative Assembly Nitish Rane tweeted the cropped clip with a Hindi caption that translates to, "Biggest traitor!!!"
(Original Text in Hindi: सर्वात मोठा गद्दार !!!)
Click here to view the tweet.
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Fact Check
BOOM found the original video was streamed live on Uddhav Thackeray's official Facebook page where the Shiv Sena (UBT) president talked about the sacrifice of Indian army soldier Aurangzeb, not the Mughal emperor.
Click here to view the post.
From 32:12 minutes onwards, Thackeray can be heard saying, "This incident is about 3-4 years old.... I think either you do not know or have forgotten about it. There was a soldier in Kashmir. He was going to meet his family after taking a leave. When terrorists got to know he is going alone after taking leave, they kidnapped him from the midway and brutally killed him. Later, his scattered body parts were found somewhere. Was he ours or not?"
Thackeray further continued, "He sacrificed his life for the country. If I now say that he was my brother then you will ask do you know his name? His name was Aurangzeb. He might belong to the Muslim community, but he sacrificed his life for the country. What is being said... Bharat Mata Ki Jay... he sacrificed his life for that... was he not our brother?"
An NDTV article from June 15, 2018, reports, "Hours after a soldier was abducted by terrorists from Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district this morning, his bullet-ridden body has been found. Aurangzeb, who was proceeding on leave for Eid when he was abducted, was shot in the head and neck, police said. His body was found by a team of police and Army at Gussu village, about 10 km away from Kalampora, in Pulwama district, from where he was abducted."
The report further states, "The soldier belongs to 4 Jammu and Kashmir Light Infantry and was posted with the 44 Rashtriya Rifles camp at Shadimarg in Shopian, where he was part of the army's ongoing anti-terror operations."
BOOM had earlier fact checked a similar false claim when Thackeray mentioned the killing incident of rifleman Aurangzeb in 2022.
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