As twitter is going crazy over communalism, many articles, and miss-information surface daily on social media. After old tweets of BJP MP Tejasvi Surya targetting Arab women resurfaced and subsequently received a lot of criticism from prominent Arab influencers, old news of Qatari Princess Sheikha Salwa has been surfaced online.
After Princess Hend Al Qassimi of UAE called out an Indian national working in Dubai for posting racist tweets, a fake news story was revived on social media to defame her and her narratives.
The clipping is a report published by DNA which is headlined, “Qatari Princess caught in Orgy with 7 men”. It cites a report by British newspaper Financial Times (FT) and says, “Qatari Princess Sheikha Salwa was caught having group sex with seven men at a hotel in London”. The same clipping, posted by Twitter handle @TheSquind. However, @TheSquind has tagged Princess Hend Al Qassimi, a member of the UAE royal family. Qassimi had recently called-out an Indian national working in Dubai for posting racist and discriminatory tweets against UAE.
The report also claims that when the Qatari Embassy in the UK was notified about the matter, they had offered the media outlet $50 million to kill the story. Social media influencer Payal Rohtagi, who on several occasions has been found spreading communally-charged misinformation, also tweeted the newspaper clipping with a message targeting journalist Nidhi Razdan.
The same story was carried by Hindi daily Amar Ujala in 2016.
Fact-check
With a Google search, Alt News found several reports which stated that the news story is “fake”. A report published by Firstpost on August 24, 2016, said, “An alleged scandal about Qatari princess which Financial Times, a British publication reported has been termed ‘fake’. At the time of writing, a variety of news reports have contradicted the Financial Times story — that has subsequently vanished as several Google searches revealed.”