The Army Research And Referral Hospital in Delhi has denied rumours that former President Pranab Mukherjee has died following a surgery to remove a blood clot from his brain.
In a statement, the hospital said, "the condition of Hon'ble Shri Pranab Mukherjee remains unchanged this morning. He is deeply comatose with stable vital parameters and he continues to be on ventilatory support."
The hospital had to issue a statement after tweets from journalists about Mukherjee's apparent demise led to confusion on social media.
Senior journalists Rajdeep Sardesai and Swati Chaturvedi tweeted that former President Mukherjee had died on Thursday morning. However, they quickly deleted the tweets after Mukherjee's children Abhijit and Sharmistha took to Twitter to deny the same.
Abhijit Mukherjee tweeted, "My Father Shri Pranab Mukherjee is still alive & haemodynamically stable ! Speculations & fake news being circulated by reputed Journalists on social media clearly reflects that Media in India has become a factory of Fake News."
Sharmistha Mukherjee tweeted, "Rumours about my father is false. Request, esp'ly to media, NOT to call me as I need to keep my phone free for any updates from the hospital."
Sardesai apologised on Twitter while Chaturvedi retweeted Sharmistha Mukherjee's tweet denying the claim.
The hashtag #RIPPranabMukherjee soon started trending on Twitter. Posts condoling Mukherjee's apparent demise have been widely shared on Facebook.
Archives of the Facebook posts can be found here, here and here.
Former President Mukherjee had undergone a surgery to remove a blood clot in his brain. On Sunday, he tweeted that he had also been diagnosed with COVID-19 during his visit to the hospital.
