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| - Fact Check: DU student's photo falsely shared as Telangana girl who killed self over non-postponement of exams
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the girl in the post is K Sankeerthana and is very much alive.
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India Today Fact Check
This is Sankeerthana, a Telugu girl who is very much alive and currently pursuing B.Com (Hons) from Delhi University. No such case of death has been reported from Telangana recently.
In light of the Covid-19 situation, university students across the country are demanding cancellation of exams, citing emotional stress due to the pandemic and risks of infection.
Meanwhile, an alleged death note of a Telangana student named "Sunitha" is viral on social media. The note is shared along with a collage of images of a young girl on one side and a blurred image of a woman supposedly hanging from a ceiling fan on another side.
According to the death note dated July 1, 2021, Sunitha took her life due to the “non-postponement of offline B-tech exams” amid the Covid-19 crisis in Telangana.
The post by a Twitter user, NehaChowdary, who goes by the handle name @NehaCho78701538, has received the highest number of reactions. The tweet posted on July 1 can be seen below.
The archived versions of the post can be seen here. The post is also viral on YouTube.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the girl in the post is K Sankeerthana and is very much alive. Sankeerthana confirmed to us that the post is fake and that she is not a B-tech student but pursuing B.Com (Hons) at Delhi University.
AFWA probe
Several students from Telangana's Jawaharlal Nehru Technology University (JNTU) were protesting against the varsity’s decision to conduct offline exams from July 2.
However, we couldn’t find any report from Telangana about any suicide of a B.Tech student due to the non-postponement of exams.
Notably, the post in question doesn’t mention where “Sunitha” is from or which college she was attending in Telangana.
We reverse-searched the girl's photograph on Google and found the same image in a ‘Telangana Today’ article published on January 25, 2021.
According to this article, the girl is K Sankeerthana, an 18-year-old from the Karimnagar district of Telangana. The article says Sankeerthana secured 942 out of 1000 in the Intermediate exam. Apparently, she was preparing to pursue her under-graduation from Australia.
AFWA contacted Sankeerthana through Telangana Social Welfare Residential Educational Institution where she completed her intermediate studies.
Dismissing the claims made by the viral post, Sankeerthana said, “I’m currently doing my first year in B.Com (Hons) from Delhi University. I’m not a B.Tech student as claimed in that post. Also, the death note shared along with my picture is not written by me. Due to the Covid-19 situation, there is no certainty when I can leave for Australia. So, I decided to join Delhi University.”
“I came to know about this fake post after a friend shared with me a post from the Twitter handle @NehaCho78701538. I, too, replied to the handle saying the post is fake. But there was no response,” she added.
Girish Mintu, a family friend of Sankeerthana, has also tweeted a clarification video featuring her on the same matter.
@NehaCho78701538 don't spread the fake news guys pic.twitter.com/w3RaWkf94O — Girish Mintu (@girish_mintu) July 1, 2021
Sharan Kumar, Telangana Engineering Students’ Joint Action Committee President said, ” No such incident has happened in Telangana. The claim made in this viral post is false. We have also confirmed it with multiple students' unions across the state.”
The Twitter profile of Neha Chowdary created on June 2021 and has only tweeted once — the post in question. This handle is also expected to have tweeted the post first, which was later picked by other social media users.
Before this, a similar post was tweeted by the same handle but was later deleted after Sankeerthana's brother Saikamal replied that the woman in the photograph is his sister.
We also checked with a number of journalists covering crime and education beats in Telangana. The reporters too confirmed that no such case of student suicide due to the non-postponement of B.Tech exams has been reported from the state recently.
Hence, it is clear that the viral claim is false and the girl in the image shared with the post is very much alive.
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