Claim: Rana Ayyub posted on X that she “hates India and Indians.”
Fact: The quote is fabricated. The screenshot of such an X post by Rana Ayyub is doctored.
On 11 November, X user @ImtiazMadmood posted a picture (archive) allegedly showing an X post by Rana Ayyub in which she wrote that she hated “India and Indians!”
The user shared the screenshot with the following caption, “You yourself are an Indian. Why so much self hate? Who is stopping you to go live in sharia compliant Afghanistan?”
Rana Ayyub is an Indian investigative journalist who has often been targeted for her work mostly focused on extra-judicial killings by the state, religious violence and Islamophobia. She self-published an investigation, titled “Gujarat Files: Anatomy of a Cover Up,” a book about the communal violence under the then Governor of the state of Gujarat Narendra Modi that had left at least 2000 people dead, mostly Muslims.
She is a global opinions writer at the Washington Post, and was previously an editor of investigative publication Tehelka.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check conducted an advanced search on X (formerly Twitter): “I hate India and Indians!” (from:RanaAyyub). The search did not yield posts showing that Ayyub said this.
With a different search combination we found that Ayyub tweeted about this claim in 2022, calling it photoshopped (archive): “These people have used a photoshopped tweet of me in the background that says ‘I hate India and I hate all Indians.’ A complaint against this photoshopped tweet was filed with @DelhiPolice in 2017. Filing a complaint with @MumbaiPolice now against this brazen fake news.”
Through keyword search, we found the alleged post surfaced in 2018. According to Ayyub, she was the target of disinformation at the time when she spoke up against the rape of an eight-year-old Kashmiri Muslim girl.
“These screenshots had been edited to look like they were coming from my verified handle. And they were being circulated everywhere,” she wrote for the Huffington Post.
The photoshopped image was apparently the first of an onslaught of disinformation against the journalist, according to her 2018 article. A deepfake porn video, edited to look like it showed Ayyub, later surfaced that was aimed at silencing her and endangered her safety. “It had exposed me to a lynch mob in India. People were thinking they could now do whatever they wanted to me.”
Moreover, a reverse-search of the doctored quote yielded a longer image that showed a reply to Ayub’s post apparently by Air India. The reply stated: “Your one way flight to Pakistan is ready.” We then conducted X advanced search “Your one way flight to Pakistan is ready” (from:airindiain) (to:RanaAyyub). This did not yield any results either.
Taking cues from this, we noticed that a post by Ayyub, who has 1.3 million followers should have gained significant viewership by now, five years later, which is not the case. We also did not find any instance of users linking the original tweet; a mere screenshot does not suggest that it is real. The number of “retweets” and “likes” are low and have remained the same since it first surfaced in 2018, another indication that a photoshopped image has been rehashed.
Virality
It appeared on X here (first image), here, here (first image), here, here (4th image), here, here, here (first image), here, here.
The Commune also posted this false image further down in its article.
Conclusion: An image that shows an X post by Rana Ayyub saying she “hates India and Indians” is doctored.
Background image in cover photo: Magzter
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