Ashwini Shrivastava is a right-wing propagandist masquerading as a journalist, using his platform of 67k followers to peddle anti-Muslim hate and misinformation. 

Despite listing his location as Washington, USA, there is no verification of his presence there. While he goes by Ashwini Shrivastava on social media, his UPI account, where he regularly solicits donations from his followers, is under the name Ashwini Sahaya.

In September 2024, Shrivastava was among several right-wing influencers who spread false claims about the murder of 29-year-old Mahalakshmi in Bengaluru, promoting the baseless narrative of ‘Love Jihad.’ 

These influencers wrongly implicated a Muslim man, Ashraf, despite evidence showing the actual perpetrator was a Hindu man, Muktirajan Pratap Ray. The sensationalized claims of a Muslim being involved were widely circulated by Ashwini and others, drawing a false parallel to the Shraddha Walkar case. However, police investigations revealed that the victim was murdered by Ray, refuting the ‘Love Jihad’ theory. 

In August 2024, Shrivastava shared a video of a woman being harassed by a mob, falsely claiming she was a Hindu targeted by Muslims. The video, which has garnered over 9 lakh views, was posted with misleading claims, further fueling communal tensions. However, fact-checkers quickly debunked his narrative, revealing that the woman in the video was not a Hindu but a member of Sheikh Hasina’s political party, the Awami League. 

In June 2024, a video went viral falsely claiming to show cattle being slaughtered in a residential complex in West Bengal during Bakri Eid was widely circulated by right-wing influencers, including Shrivastava. RW influencers tweeted the video with the claim that it depicted a celebration of Islam and criticized it. 

Upon investigation, it was revealed that the video was filmed in Dhaka, Bangladesh, not West Bengal. A watermark on the video led to the discovery that Ashwini Shrivastava had originally shared the video in 2023, incorrectly attributing it to a housing society in Dhaka. A reverse image search and comparison with images from Google Maps conclusively confirmed that the video was taken from a residential complex in Dhaka, where the cow slaughtering incident occurred, disproving the claim. The spread of misinformation by influencers like Shrivastava highlights the potential harm of such misleading narratives that fuel misconceptions.

In another claim by Shrivasta in June 2024, he, along with other right-wing influencers, spread false claims about a JCB driver who damaged toll booths at the Chhajarsi toll plaza in Uttar Pradesh’s Hapur district. Shrivastava falsely identified the driver as Mohammad Sajid Ali, claiming he was Muslim and angry over being asked to pay toll tax. The incident went viral, with Shrivastava and others amplifying the misleading narrative. 

However, Hapur Police later revealed that the driver was actually Dheeraj, a 23-24-year-old laborer from Janpath Badaun, who was under the influence of alcohol at the time.