Daijiworld Media Network - New Delhi

New Delhi, Jan 29: Senior journalist and anchor Rajdeep Sardesai has been suspended by the India Today Group for providing false information on live television and on Twitter. The media house also deducted the journalist's salary of a month as part of disciplinary action along with pulling him off-air for two weeks.

Sardesai, a consulting editor with the India Today Group, had tweeted saying that a man who had died during the farmers’ tractor rally in Delhi on January 26 had been 'shot.' However, he soon deleted his tweet and mentioned on air that the farmer had been killed in an accident after his tractor toppled.

Sardesai's now-deleted tweet

He had tweeted a video of the tractor overturning and posted that protesters had claimed that the man, Navneet Singh, was 'shot at by Delhi Police', but the video 'clearly shows' that the tractor had overturned, and that 'allegations' of the protesters 'don’t stand'. 

Asked about the action against Sardesai, the India Today Group said in a statement: “Disciplinary action for breach of our code of conduct is a confidential matter and we would like to refrain from commenting on this.”

Earlier on January 23, Sardesai had accused the President of India of unveiling the wrong portrait of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose. After the official Twitter handle of the Rashtrapati Bhavan had posted the image of the portrait on the occasion of 125th birth anniversary of the freedom fighter, several journalists and opposition leaders had alleged that the portrait was of actor Prosenjit Chatterjee, who had played the role of Bose in a movie. But later it was revealed that the portrait was based on a photograph of Bose, which was supplied by his grand-nephew. Rajdeep Sardesai was one of the journalists to spread the fake news on Twitter, along with others like Barkha Dutt, Sagarika Ghose, Rohini Singh etc.