Pakistan-born columnist Tarek Fateh recently shared an old video of two doctors in a heated argument during a surgery in Rajasthan, and falsely claimed that it shows a scene from a hospital in Pakistan.
BOOM found that the video shows an incident from 2017 when two doctors were arguing inside an operation theatre in Rajasthan's Umaid Hospital during the surgery of a pregnant woman.
Fatah, who lives in Canada and has a huge following among the Indian right wing on Twitter, quote tweeted the video with a caption, "How does one country produce so many rectums? How does Pakistan do it? Here surgeons in an operation theatre get into a heated argument with nursing staff."
Click here to view the post.
BOOM has fact checked Fatah on several occasions for peddling misinformation targetting Muslims. The articles can be read here.
The video is also being widely circulated with another false claim that the incident took place at a hospital in Chandigarh, Punjab.
Click here to view the post.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on one of the key-frames from the video and found a Deccan Herald tweet from August 30, 2017, stating that the incident happened in a hospital in Jodhpur, Rajasthan.
Taking a cue from this, we did a further related keyword search which led us to a tweet from news agency ANI carrying the video uploaded on the same day.
The tweet stated, "Rajasthan: Verbal spat between two doctors in OT during the surgery of a pregnant woman in Jodhpur's Umaid Hospital (29.8.17)".
Click here to view the tweet.
We also found a Hindu article about the incident. The article states that the argument took place between Gynecologist Ashok Nainwal and a doctor named ML which reportedly continued for about half an hour.
The then superintendent of the Jodhpur hospital Dr. Ranjana Desai told the BBC that both the woman and the baby were fine and denied the initial media reports claiming negligence led to the newborn's death.
"A baby did die, but not the one the media reported. A few feet away, on another operating table within the same room, a different woman gave birth to a stillborn baby. These two incidents are not linked," said Dr Desai had told the BBC.
According to a report by Hindi daily Patrika published on September 6, 2017, Jodhpur District Collector Ravikumar Surpur held doctors Ashok Nainwal and M.L Tak guilty under the code of medical ethics for committing such actions and recommended disciplinary action on both of them.
