Facing backlash, Pakistan PM Imran Khan deletes false tweets in which he sought to target India

Islamabad: Facing a backlash for peddling fake news, Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan on Friday deleted all three videos from his Twitter timeline in which he falsely claimed that the Uttar Pradesh police was carrying out "a pogrom" against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. A video shared by Khan was soon fact-checked and found to be of 2013 and showed police action against a group of people in Bangladesh.

The Pakistan Prime Minister had tried to pass off the clip as a case of police brutality "against Muslims" in Uttar Pradesh. "Indian police`s pogrom against Muslims in UP," Khan had tweeted. At one point in the now-deleted video, a policeman is seen holding a shield of Rapid Action Battalion (RAB), proving that it was an incident in Bangladesh. The RAB is an elite anti-crime and anti-terrorism unit of the Bangladesh Police.

Prime Minister of Pakistan Imran Khan tweets an old video of violence from Bangladesh and says, 'Indian police's pogrom against Muslims in UP.' pic.twitter.com/6SrRQvm0H9 — ANI (@ANI) January 3, 2020

Uttar Pradesh police took a swipe at Khan over his misleading tweets. "This is not from UP, but from a May 2013 incident in Dhaka, Bangladesh. The RAB (Rapid Action Battalion) written on the vests at 0:21s, 1:27s or the Bengali spoken, or these links would help you be better informed," UP Police tweeted.

Khan faced a strong backlash on social media for tweeting the face video with users saying that he does not even do basic fact-checking. "Sources: Imran Khan has just exited a WhatsApp group named "Say No To CAA" after a leading Indian journalist shared a fake video there, which Imran ended up putting on Twitter and embarrassing himself," tweeted a user.

"Pakistan PM Imran Khan is so geographically challenged that earlier for him Germany and Japan were immediate neighbours with a common border. Now he`s passing off a video from Bangladesh as that from India. Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate," politician Priyanka Chaturvedi tweeted. 

The misleading tweets came at a time when the reports of a group of people vandalising Nankana Sahib Gurdwara in Pakistan`s Punjab province began surfacing.