Fact Check: Image claiming Red notices were issued against Indian Home minister Amit Shah is fake
A Canadian official recently alleged that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered a campaign of violence, intimidation
Amit Shah
A Canadian official recently alleged that Indian Home Minister Amit Shah ordered a campaign of violence, intimidation, and intelligence gathering against Skih separatists residing in Canada. Deputy Foreign Affairs Minister David Morrison confirmed to the members of the national security committee that the Canadian government considers Shah the architect of the campaign against Sikh separatists in Canada. Indian officials are yet to respond to these comments, but the Ministry of External Affairs previously refuted the claims that the Indian government is involved in the alleged attacks against Sikh activists as baseless.
Amidst this situation, social media users are sharing an image with the claim that Interpol has issued a Wanted Notice against Indian Home Minister Amit Shah. The caption shared along with the image goes “where is the caption?”
Fact Check:
The claim is False. The image is a fake one, there is no such notice issued by Interpol.
Firstly, let us understand when the Interpol issues the Red notices. Red notices are issued for fugitives wanted either for prosecution or to serve a sentence in relation to serious law crimes such as murder, rape, and fraud. This follows criminal proceedings in the country issuing the request. This is not always the home country of the individual. When a person is sought for prosecution, it means the person has not been convicted and should be considered innocent until proven guilty. A person who sought to serve a sentence means that this person has been found guilty by a court in the country that requested the publication of the Red Notice.
When we searched with the keywords “Interpol wanted notice + Amit Shah”, we did not find any reports. Even though there have been several articles on the comments by the Canadian official, there is no report about the notice issued by Interpol.
To find further details, we opened the website of Interpol and searched for reports about Amit Shah. We found a news report that mentioned Amit Shah was published in the year 2019 and there is no recent news with this name.
After that, we searched in the Red notices section for the name ‘Amit Shah’, and found no red notice with that name. We did not find any Yellow notices either.
Hence, the image shared in the viral posts is a doctored one. Interpol did not issue any Red notice in the name of Amit Shah. The claim is False.