An old photograph of Annie Raja, General Secretary of the National Federation of Indian Woman (NFIW) being detained by the police has resurfaced with false claims that she is a first year student of Jawaharlal Nehru University (JNU).
In the viral post, where Raja can be seen being accosted by policewomen into a van, she has been identified mockingly as 'Lajwanti tai', a first year, Bachelor's degree student.
The image has been captioned as, "Student of JNU Lajwanti Tai being arrested while protesting against the fee hike. Her roll number is 69." (Original text in Hindi: #फीस बढ़ाने को लेकर विरोध स्वरूप गिरफ्तारी देती,
The same photograph is viral on Twitter, where Raja has been misidentified as a first year JNU student arrested by Delhi Police.
While netizens tried to question if the photo was that of a professor, the fan account which tweeted it said students and teachers of the institute share same communist ideology.
BOOM ran a reverse image search and found that the photograph was taken in May this year.
Annie Raja from the NFIW, was part of the women's organisations which were staging protests against the former Chief Justice of India Ranjan Gogoi being given a clean chit by the Justice SA Bobde Inquiry Committee on May 8, 2019. Annie Raja is also a CPI activist and is the wife of communist leader D Raja.
BOOM reached out to Raja who rubbished claims of being a student of JNU.
"Of course I am a student, but not of JNU. I was detained by the police when we were staging demonstrations against the CJI in the sexual harassment case in May this year. This has got nothing to do with the ongoing JNU protests," Annie Raja said.
The students of JNU were lathi-charged by Delhi Police on November 18, when they were marching towards the parliament with their demands of rolling back the hostel fee hike. Several students were injured during the face-off with the Delhi police.