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Earlier this year, Urmila Kumari, a resident of Nawada district in Bihar, lost Rs 57,900 to a scam where her fingerprints were cloned. 

It’s not just Kumari. The Bihar police is tired of frauds through the AePS (Aadhaar Enabled Payment System). Find out more about it in this edition. 

🔖 West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee, while addressing an event on the foundation day of Trinamool Chhatra Parishad (TMCP) claimed that she was the Union Railway Minister when Pokhran-II was conducted in May 1998. 

How do you fact-check such claims on your own?

Here’s a quick guide: 

• Step 1: Go through the archives available on the Press Information Bureau’s (PIB) website. One such press release mentioned how in August 1999 Nitish Kumar had resigned as the Railways Minister following the Gaisal Train Disaster which killed more than 280 people.

• Step 2: When were the five nuclear tests conducted? Again, there is a PIB press release on this which mentioned that India conducted these nuclear tests at the Pokhran range on 11 & 13 May 1998.

• Step 3: What about Mamata Banerjee? When was she the Union Railway Minister? A detailed list of ministers is available on the Indian Railways’ website. She became the Union Railways Minister only on 13 October 1999 and served till 15 March 2001 in her first stint. Her second tenure was between 2009 and 2011. 

Read the detailed fact-check here.

P.S. A lot of times fact-checking is about digging deeper and researching more. It’s not always about using online fact-checking tools. All depends on the kind of information you have to verify.

By Teens, Of Teens, For Teens

🔖 The teenagers at Teen Fact-Checking Network India (TFCN) show you how they debunked this false claim that was made at the height of the Kuki-Meitei tensions in Manipur. Watch!

🅱️ Quiz

Do you know what really happened in the news this week? Find out by taking the BOOM quiz:

👆 Simply click on image below to start the quiz!

🤥 The Lie Count

21

Fact-Checks Published

Political content was at the top (29%), followed by a tie between claims pertaining to communalism, sports and (generic) celebration/sensationalism (14%).

We noted that Chandrayaan-3 continues to be a cause for celebration coupled with sensationalist misinformation.

Read our thread on ‘X’ (formerly Twitter) to know the detailed analysis by Debraj Sarkar.

Cloned Fingerprints Scam: The Story Of Aadhaar Enabled Payment System

🔖The AePS was launched in 2014 by the Indian government to empower people of villages with few or no bank branches but it has now become an easy way for scammers to dupe them. 

Is the police able to identify these scammers? 

"The main problem is that we lack evidence of this fraud. Though we locate the place where transactions have taken place, we can't identify who did this until the scammers have transferred money instead of withdrawing the cash amount," a police officer at the cyber unit in Bihar told Decode’s Umesh Kumar Ray.

So, what exactly is AePS? How are these scammers getting access to your fingerprints? Find out in this story.

Read More

Gig Workers Face The Brunt As G20 Summit Puts Food Delivery On Hold

🔖 Meanwhile, in light of the G20 summit in Delhi, the authorities have halted food and commercial delivery services by companies such as Swiggy, Zomato, Blinkit and Zepto in the New Delhi district. 

Decode’s Hera Rizwan spoke to 12 gig workers from both Swiggy and Zomato who talked about the repercussions of this decision for them. 

Read More

India Vs Bharat: A Tale Of Three Petitions In the Supreme Court

🔖 Even as the political war on India vs Bharat intensifies, the Supreme Court on at least three occasions—in 2014, 2016 and 2020—entertained pleas seeking a change in the country’s name. 

• Twice, the top court directed the petitioner to submit their representation to the ministry.

• While on one occasion the Supreme Court observed that one could call the country whatever they liked—India or Bharat. 

BOOM’s Ritika Jain recaps the pleas and the top court’s reaction to the same. 

Read More

🚫 Fake News You Almost Fell For

🔍 A post claiming that the Oxford Dictionary published in the 1900s defines the word India as "old fashioned people, criminals an stupid people" went viral on social media. But, is the claim true? 🔗Nidhi Jacob↗️ finds out.

🔍 🔗Hazel Gandhi↗️ debunked old videos of people reacting to unrelated movies that went viral as the public's reaction to Shah Rukh Khan's latest movie, Jawan. 

🔍 A video of former cricketer and BJP MP Gautam Gambhir showing his middle finger toward a crowd in the stands during a game at the Asia Cup 2023 with chants of "Bharat tere tukde honge" (India will break) heard in the background is doctored. Read this fact-check by 🔗Anmol Alphonso↗️.

🔍 Several viral tweets, showing that a cylinder of liquefied petroleum gas (LPG) costed Rs 410 in 2014 and Rs 1103 today is misleading. Quick hint: The comparison is an apple to oranges comparison. Read 🔗Mohammed Kudrati’s↗️ fact-check.

🅱️ Recommends

📖 This week's recommendation is: Defining “Fake News” by Edson C. Tandoc Jr., Zheng Wei Lim & Richard Ling

A research article analysing the definition of terms associated with mis/disinformation. It is based on a review of 34 academic articles that used the term “fake news” from 2003 to 2017. 

Read More

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