Claim
Corruption in military exams too! 18 RSS thieves sell stolen questionnaire for Rs 10 crore!
Rating
Description
The meme has been going viral on social networking sites alleging corruption in the Indian military exam under the BJP regime and the arrest of 18 RSS members who stole the exam question paper and sold it for Rs 10 crore.
“18 RSS members from Marathi state and Goa have been arrested for stealing and selling a questionnaire for the Indian Army exam for Rs 10 crore. This was stated by Thane Municipal Police Chief Nitin Thackeray. A further 350 people who wrote the exam have also been arrested. According to the arrestees, the questionnaires were sold for Rs 2 lakh each.
Fact Check:
The search for the man who was arrested for stealing and selling a military exam questionnaire has been reported in 2017 in English news outlets including The Economic Times, The Hindu Businessline and Tamil news outlets such as Dailythanthi and Malaimalar. But the detainees are nowhere mentioned as RSS members.
Questionnaires for military selection in Maratha and Goa states were released in advance. In connection with this, the crime branch police arrested 18 people, including a retired army officer, a paramilitary officer and 3 intermediaries. In addition, the police took away 350 students for questioning for possessing question papers. ”
Moreover, as stated in the viral post, Nitin Thackeray himself is not the head of the Metropolitan Police but a senior police officer of the Crime Branch.
Perhaps if the RSS members where arrested it would have made headlines across India and the protests in political circles would have intensified.
Explanation
In our search, the information spread that 18 RSS members were arrested in connection with the release of the 2017 military exam questionnaire was false. Associating the name of the RSS with an incident that actually took place is known as deliberately spreading false news by someone.
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