By Prantik Ali

A video is viral on social media with the claim that a junior government office worker in Aligarh spat into a senior judicial officer’s glass of water. The video, which is around 80-second long, shows a man pouring out a glass of water, then proceeding to spit into it, unaware of the fact that he is being recorded. The viral video comes with a voice-over narration reporting that the incident took place at a judicial office in Aligarh, Uttar Pradesh, where a judge had become a victim of ‘thook jihad’.

An X-verified user named Kalpana Srivastav, who runs the handle @Lawyer_Kalpana and describes herself as a criminal advocate practising in Delhi, shared the viral video with the claim that this instance of ‘thook jihad’ is as recent as July 2024, and has taken place at the Aligarh court. (Archive)

Legal activist and BJP leader Ashwini Upadhyay shared the viral video with a caption in Hindi, calling for an abolition of the ‘Mughal school’, and urged the ruling government to implement ‘One country one education code’, insinuating that the person spitting into the glass of water was a Muslim. He later deleted the tweet but not before it had been reshared around 1,800 times. (Archive)

X-verified user @ajaychauhan41 also shared the video claiming that it was an instance of ‘thook jihad’, a term invented by the Right Wing to defame Muslims. (Archive)

@ajaychauhan41 has been found by Alt News sharing communal propaganda innumerable times in the past.

Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaala), another user who regularly amplifies communal disinformation on social media, shared the video claiming that the office peon was committing ‘thook jihad’ by spitting into the glass of water. (Archive)

Read Full Story https://www.altnews.in/up-court-staffer-vikas-gupta-spitting-into-glass-of-water-2018-video-shared-with-thook-jihad-claims/