Hyderabad: Editor-in-chief of Republic TV and anchor Arnab Goswami was caught lying during a debate on national television last week when his “intelligence” regarding Pakistan army’s alleged presence in Afghanistan’s Panjshir valley backfired.
The clip from his ‘debate’ has now become a favorite meme material for Indians and well as Pakistanis on Twitter.
Arnab Goswami is notorious for his war-mongering and aggressive hate-fueled journalism that supports the interests of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).
He claimed that the Pakistan Army officers were staying on the fifth floor of the luxury Serena Hotel in Kabul, allegedly to support the Taliban to fight against resistance fighters in Panjshir.
The claim of the anchor was quickly exposed as the Serena Hotel in Kabul only has two floors, not five.
In the debate on the Republic World TV channel last week, Goswami had invited a spokesperson of the ruling Pakistan Tehreek-i-Insaaf (PTI) Party Abdul Samad Yaqoob to represent Pakistan. The discussion on the channel was termed as a “Big split within the Taliban”.
“You go and check today… on the fifth floor of the Serena Hotel, I am telling you, please check, the fifth floor of the Serena hotel in Kabul, how many Pakistani army officers are there?” Goswami told Yaqoob.
Doubling down on his claim he said that he can even provide the room numbers of the Pakistani officers. “I can also maybe tell you what they ordered for dinner so don’t question my intelligence sources… we’ve got all our aerial surveillance on you people,” he claimed.
The next day, Yaqoob returned to Goswami’s program and countered the anchor’s claim by arguing that what he got to know from his sources is that the hotel in Kabul has only two floors. “There are no third, fourth, or fifth floors,” he remarked.
Goswami responded to it with a burst of laughter.
The amusing exchange went viral on Sunday as netizens from India and Pakistan alike called out Goaswami for making false claims. The hashtags #ArnabGowsami and #ISIon5thFloor attracted thousands of tweets in the past few days.
Pakistan’s ruling PTI party took the credit for exposing “the fake news network of India” and tweeted that the Indian news has become “a laughing stock of the world”.
Veteran journalist and columnist Tavleen Singh took to twitter and wrote, “If Arnab Goswami was indeed briefed by Indian intelligence sources that the Serena Hotel in Kabul has five floors we need to worry about Indian intelligence agencies.”