By Deepak Adhikari/NepalCheck.org

A photo of Toshima Karki, a former state minister for health and a lawmaker of Rastriya Swatantra Party, has become viral on social media platforms, including X (formerly Twitter), Facebook and TikTok. On January 29,  the X handle @kalpana9133, with 8191 followers, shared a post with the following text: “I don’t know where Salikram Pudasaini and driver are now” The handle posted a photo of Karki and others holding placards with the same text.  The same post has been shared by Facebook user RP Gautam, who has 16,000 followers. On X, handle @BirkhaGadaili posted a cropped photo of Karki holding a placard that read: “When will the cooperative victims get justice?” (see screenshot).

On TikTok, @ray_0f_hope (revolutionfornepal) posted the photo on January 31 with placards demanding that party president Rabi Lamichhane resign over the alleged misappropriation of funds from a cooperative. The post, accompanied by sad music, has received 21000 views as of February 2, 2024.

What was the context of the protest?

On December 29, 2023, two young men, who were protesting against their exclusion from an exam for a South Korean employment scheme, were killed in clashes with police in the Balkumari neighborhood of Lalitpur district. Hundreds of job aspirants had gathered in the area, demanding that they be allowed to take exams for the foreign jobs. Police told The Kathmandu Post that the clashes erupted after police used force to prevent the protesters from storming the Employment Permit System (EPS) office in Balkumari.

On December 30, 2023, Toshima Karki, the lawmaker of Rastriya Swatantra Party (RSP), led a protest outside the office. 

Why has the photo gone viral now?

In late December, 2023, news media reported that Lamichhane had illegally taken a loan of Rs 100 million from a cooperative opened by GB Rai, the promoter of Gorkha Media. The company ran Galaxy 4K TV, where Lamichhane was a managing director until he resigned in June 2022 to set up the RSP. Defending himself, Lamichhane said he had been given sweat equity shares for his work at Galaxy 4K TV. 

A month later, The Kathmandu Post and Kantipur published another report claiming that Lamichhane had received Rs 18 million from a cooperative run by Rai, when he left Galaxy 4K TV. On January 22, 2024, Lamichhane held a press conference at his party headquarters in Kathmandu, refuting the reports. He produced a letter from Global IME Bank which stated that the said amount hadn’t been deposited into his account and the voucher the news media published was part of documents submitted to the Office of Company Registrar for the purpose of share transfer.

Fact-check

In order to determine the veracity of the photos, we used Reverse Image Search on Google. According to the search results, the photos showed Karki protesting against the killing of job aspirants for South Korea employment. The photos of the protest were published by several news outlets including Baarhakhari and Khabar Hub. In a photo of the protest published by Khabar Hub, Karki is holding a placard that reads: “Prime Minister, now the number has reached 17000 + 2. How many more?” The number 17,000 relates to the total number of people killed during the decade-long Maoist insurgency that ended in 2006. 

Barhakhari published a photo of Karki from the same protest, where she’s holding a placard that read in English: “THERE IS NO FLAG LARGE ENOUGH TO COVER THE SAME OF KILLING PEOPLE.”

The photo actually originates from the protest Karki led on December 30, 2023 against the killing of two young men who clashed with police during the demonstration. Karki’s original placard demanded accountability for these deaths, not for issues related to a cooperative or her political party.

The images were digitally altered to show Karki and her party RSP in a bad light.

Nepal Check verdict after fact-checking a photo claiming to show lawmaker Toshima Karki protesting against her party’s chair Lamichhane.