Dr. Shalabh Mani Tripathi is a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader and Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Deoria, Uttar Pradesh. He is also an islamophobe, a hardline supporter of Hindutva and openly pushes the BJP’s nationalist and anti-Muslim agenda. Tripathi, who is an ex-media advisor to Uttar Pradesh Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath, is a regular at spreading fake news and fueling communal tension.  

A former journalist, Tripathi has built his political career by promoting Hindu supremacy and defending controversial policies tied to the Hindutva ideology. In November 2024, Shalabh Mani Tripathi sparked outrage after releasing a list of 32 Muslim journalists covering the by-elections in Moradabad district. He accused them of carrying out “media jihad,” implying they were working together to spread lies and misinformation.

Posting on his X handle (formerly Twitter), Tripathi wrote, “Just look at the list of journalists covering Moradabad, from where most lies were spread in the UP by-elections through edited videos and pictures.” The list, which included the names of journalists and the media outlets they worked for, provided no evidence to support his claims. Instead, it openly targeted Muslim journalists, fueling religious hatred and attempting to delegitimize their work without any factual basis. His tweet gained traction, receiving 7.3k likes and 3.9k reposts. Tripathi, who has 443.8k followers on X, used his platform to amplify hate and spread fear under the guise of exposing bias.

This is not the first time MLA Shalabh Mani Tripathi has targeted Muslim journalists and questioned their credibility. In October 2024, following deadly communal clashes in Bahraich during a Durga idol immersion procession that left a 22-year-old Hindu man dead, Tripathi took to X (formerly Twitter) to fuel further division.

He posted, “Just read the names of the journalists sending news from Bahraich, you will understand how unbiased and true the news is. A group of YouTubers is also engaged. The whole system is engaged in saving the rioters and in spreading lies.” Tripathi then shared a list of Muslim journalists and YouTubers, once again singling them out and accusing them of spreading misinformation without offering any proof.

For Tripathi, dissent is intolerable—especially if it comes from Muslims. In October 2024, he openly threatened Muslim protesters with a “taste of Israel” if they continued demonstrating against the blasphemous remarks made by Hindutva leader Yati Narsinghanand.

Doubling down on his anti-Muslim rhetoric, Tripathi declared that India operates under the Constitution of Babasaheb Ambedkar, not Islamic law. “Treatment will be given through Babasaheb’s constitution, not Shariah—don’t cry later,” he wrote on X.

The protests erupted after Yati Narsinghanand made vile comments against Prophet Mohammed during a program in Ghaziabad in September 2024, sparking outrage and clashes in Maharashtra.

In January 2023, Shalabh Mani Tripathi tweeted a 41-second video with the caption, “After Sri Lanka and China, now look at the condition of people in Pakistan fighting over flour. Thank yourself that you are in Mr. @narendramodi ji’s India!!”

The video showed four individuals fighting over a sack of wheat. However, a fact-check by Alt News exposed the post as misleading. The video was from September 2022, when Pakistan was dealing with catastrophic floods, not a food shortage.

Tripathi’s record of spreading fake news doesn’t end there. In February 2021, he retweeted a doctored image of singerRihanna holding Pakistan’s national flag. This came shortly after Rihanna voiced support for India’s farmers’ protests.

A fact-check by Alt News revealed that the image was fake—Rihanna was actually holding a flag with the Cricket West Indies (CWI) crest.

In April 2021, Shalabh Mani Tripathi shared a doctored video of then CPI leader Kanhaiya Kumar, falsely claiming that Kumar had called Naxalites “martyrs” after 22 security personnel were killed in a Maoist attack in Chhattisgarh’s Bijapur. Tripathi pushed the same clip again after the 2019 Maharashtra Naxal attack that killed 15 security personnel.

The video, which originated from a pro-BJP propaganda page called ‘Political Kida,’ was edited to twist Kumar’s words. A fact-check by Alt News proved that the clip was from a 2016 interview with former NDTV journalist Ravish Kumar about the JNU sedition row. In the full interview, Kumar spoke about injustice against Adivasis wrongly labeled as Naxals and killed. Tripathi also shared the video on his Facebook profile.

Tripathi regularly pushed the baseless “love jihad” conspiracy to fuel hate against Muslims. In August 2020, he shared a video of Shalini Yadav, who married a Muslim man, Mohammed Faisal, and willingly converted to Islam. Despite Shalini publicly stating—multiple times and even in court—that she acted of her own free will, Tripathi and the BJP turned her marriage into propaganda. Shalini, now Fiza Fatima, dismissed all accusations, calling them false and insulting. Even her conversion certificate confirmed it was voluntary. But facts never matter to Tripathi.

Tripathi frequently shares random and baseless videos to fuel hatred against Muslims, showing no regard for truth or his own credibility. And let’s not forget—he’s not just some random troll but an elected politician in the ruling government.