By Hazel Gandhi
An old video showing passports and Aadhaar cards discarded in a field is viral online with social media users failing to mention that it is not recent.
BOOM found that the claims are false, the passports were recovered from Haryana in 2018 and the video is being falsely linked to a recent controversy involving Vishal Dadlani and Kulwinder Kaur.
Newly elected Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MP from Mandi, Kangana Ranaut, was slapped by a CISF officer during a security check at the Chandigarh airport on June 6, 2024. A video of the now-suspended officer, Kulwinder Kaur, circulated on social media where she was seen explaining why she hit the actor-turned-politician. Kaur claimed that she was enraged over Ranaut's old statement about women participating in the farmers' protest for Rs 100. "Kangana said the women were sitting in the farmers’ protests for ₹100. Will she go and sit there? My mother was sitting there and protesting when she made that remark," Kaur was heard saying. Following her suspension and an FIR against her, singer Vishal Dadlani voiced his support for Kaur and asked his followers to put him in touch with her. He claimed that he would ensure that Kaur would find employment if she needed it.
BOOM had previously debunked this video in April 2023 when it was being shared as a video from Dwarka, Gujarat.
The viral video showing passports and Aadhaar cards strewn across a field are being shared to claim that some of them belong to Dadlani and Kulwinder Kaur. A caption on X reads, "Fake Aadhaar cards and fake passports in the name of villagers were found in the fields.'Kulwinder Kaur' 'Vishal Dadlani'"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
The video is also being shared on Facebook with a similar caption.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is from Haryana in 2018 and and is being falsely shared as recent.
We ran a reverse image search of some key frames from the viral video on Google and found a report published by Punjab Kesari on March 10, 2018. According to the report, that carried visuals resembling the viral video, the police were investigating a case where multiple passports were found in a field in the Sirsa district of Haryana.
According to a Hindustan Times report from March 11, 2018, the station house officer (SHO) at Kalanwali police station, Om Prakash, spoke about how the passports belonged to people in different parts of Punjab.
The police found 258 passports and other documents discarded around a field in Chakerian village, Sirsa. According to Kalanwali Station House Officer (SHO) Om Prakash, people in different parts of Punjab had given their passports to a Ludhiana-based immigration agency to apply for visas.
“The immigration firm’s office was closed recently and firm had also lodged a complaint with the Ludhiana police about the passports having gone missing. We are investigating how these passports reached here,” Prakash added.
About 254 passports were lost after being dispatched by the Regional Passport Office in Chandigarh. A few people lodged a complaint with the local police after not receiving their passports despite receiving messages about them being dispatched from the RPO in January 2018.
Navin Singla, Senior Superintendent of Police, Bathinda, informed that district police officers would visit Kalanwali to confirm whether the passports that were found belong to these people.
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