Flying coconut: Clipped video of News Nation show ‘Operation Pakhand’ viral with false claims
A clip from news channel News Nation featuring a man making a coconut fly in the air using some hand gestures has been doing the rounds on social media. However, at many points in the video, it is clearly visible that a thin thread has been tied on both sides of the coconut. It has been claimed that News Nation was giving airtime to conmen on national television and broadcast the spectacle of flying coconuts.
A user named Jaiky Yadav shared the video clip and remarked on the country’s media, saying that it had fallen to a very low level. He added that in a segment of News Nation, a person named Kuldeep Mishra showed a magic trick of making a coconut levitate, but it was clearly noticeable later that a thread was tied to it.
Ankur Singh, who runs Political Keeda, also shared the video and wrote that news channels had become a joke. A Dhruv Rathee parody account also made the same claim while sharing the video.
Journalist Anil Yadav, who has worked with News Nation in the past, shared the video and criticized the channel, adding that this was why he had left the channel. He also expressed his frustration at what he called a fake imposter waving coconuts in the air, while it was clearly visible in the video that the coconut was tied with a thread.
Ravi Gupta, a former journalist and currently a comedian, shared the viral video and called out the news channel in a sarcastic manner. This video is gathering a lot of traction on social media.
Fact Check
When Alt News searched for the longer version of the viral video, we discovered that a clipped portion is being circulated without context. In fact, this video is from News Nation’s show ‘Operation Pakhand’, which is hosted by journalist Rohit Ranjan. This program is part of the campaign against superstition which challenges charlatans and warns against those who dupe people by pretending to have miraculous powers.
What was the setup of the show ‘Operation Pakhand’?
On one side of the show, there was 25 year old so-called miraculous Baba Dayanand Maharaj, and on the other side, those who questioned his powers, including Hindu religious leaders Kaushal Kishore Thakur and Acharya Sanjeev Agnihotri, along with magicians Kuldeep Mishra and Amar Singh.
What was the real issue?
In the News Nation segment, the 25 year old so-called Baba Dayanand Maharaj claimed that apart from driving away ghosts and djinns, he could also cure diseases like cancer with his siddhis and tantric powers. During the question-answer portion of the show, at the 10:15 mark of the video, the show’s host journalist Rohit Ranjan tells the so-called Baba Dayanand Maharaj that they saw a video of him making a coconut levitate in the air, to which Dayanand responds that he had done so using a mantra of the Hindu goddess Bhadrakali.
Following this remark, the Hindu religious leaders and magicians in the panel refuted the claims of the Baba and called him a fraud. The magicians also showed the audience some tricks, which included making a coconut levitate in the air with the help of a rope.
At the 14:49 mark of the video, Hindu religious leader Kaushal Kishore Thakur stated that all this was not a siddhi, but a magic trick.
At the 18:42 mark, Hindu religious leader Acharya Sanjeev Agnihotri took a dig at the so-called miracle Baba Dayanand Maharaj’s claim of making a coconut levitate in the air and stated that nowadays there was a lot of fakery going on in this country with many fraudulent Babas duping others.
At the 27:46 mark, magician Kuldeep Mishra also took aim at the so-called miracle Baba Dayanand Maharaj’s claim of lifting a coconut in the air with the help of mantras and challenged him that if he put a needle in front of him, he would not be able to move it. He showed the audience how coconuts were lifted in the air by fake Babas with mantras. He denied this was any sort of miracle, and was trying to demonstrate that the coconut could not be levitated in the air by any mantras, and there was a thread tied to it with the help of which it was lifted.
At the 34:23 mark, magician Amar Singh, too, refuted the claims of the Baba and said that there was only one scientific way of making a lemon or any other object fly in the air, which is that the object had to be tied somewhere. He also showed a lemon tied to a thread and said that there was only one way to make it fly, using a barely visible thread tied at both ends.
To sum up, several social media users shared a clipped video from News Nation’s show ‘Operation Pakhand’ without context and criticised the news channel for promoting fraudulent individuals on national television. However, in reality, the news channel was exposing fakery and supposed miracles, contrary to the claims made online, and the viral video was a part of that.
The post Flying coconut: Clipped video of News Nation show ‘Operation Pakhand’ viral with false claims appeared first on Alt News.
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