EU Disinfo Lab, a non-governmental fact check NGO in Europe, claims that an Indian network is spreading anti-Pakistan propaganda through 265 'fake media outlets' in 65 countries of the world. All these 'fake media outlets' are connected to the Srivastava Group in Delhi.

It is the same Srivastava Group whose International Institute for Non-Aligned Studies (IINS) arranged for 23 EU MPs to visit Kashmir in October this year and meet Prime Minister of India Narendra Modi.

The European Union has created a forum to deal with the fake news being spread by Russia. This independent fact check is working to identify fake propaganda in Europe. Most of the content of all these 265 outlets is full of anti-Pakistan news.

The EU's Disinfo Lab has found in its layer-by-layer investigation how Delhi's Srivastava Group is connected to the "fake local news outlets" operating abroad.

Disinfo Lab found that many people are sharing the lies being spread by Russia on the EP Today website. After this, when the lab started investigating this website, it came to light that this website is connected to India. After this, several foreign websites came out one after another in the investigation, whose wires were found related to Delhi.

According to the BBC, we came to the address A2 / 59 Safdarjung on the official website to know the Srivastava Group's stand on this whole matter. A house was found at this address, which was guarded by security guards standing at the gate. He told us that there is no office here. No email ID has been provided on this website to contact. When we called the number given, the answer was that "Sir will call you."

On this matter, we have asked through a mail to the Ministry of External Affairs of India whether the information of such websites is with the Ministry. And is it related to the Indian government in any way? We have not received any response from the Ministry till this report is written.

On 9 October, the EU's Disinfo Lab explained on Twitter how the role of Srivastava Group of India came to light in its investigation.

- On the official website of EP Today it has been given the address of Brussels, Belgium. After this, Srivastava Group's official website was scanned. The group is headquartered in Delhi and has an office in Belgium, Switzerland and Canada. The special thing is that the Belgium based office of EP Today and Srivastava Group is at the same address.

- Disinfo Lab says that searching EP Today's IP History revealed that it was hosted on the same server on which Srivastava Group was hosted. That is, both the websites were hosted on a server earlier.

- The original registration of http://eptoday.com was linked to http://UIWNET.COM. The host server of UIWNET.COM and Srivastava Group is one.

- In October this year, a report was told that four people are running the Facebook page of EP Today from Delhi. When the BBC investigated it, it found that its Facebook page had been suspended.

- This Indian group is also working in Geneva, which is the United Nations Refugee Agency. An online newspaper named Times of Geneva (timesofgeneva.com) is being run. On this website it is being claimed that "He has been in this business for 35 years".

- Times of Geneva has the same content which is being printed on EP Today. There is also video on the site of the Times of Geneva, which either talks about the condition of minorities in Pakistan or focuses on Gilgit-Baltistan. There was considerable coverage on the performance of Pakistani minorities on the Times of Geneva.

- The Disinfo Lab claims that an NGO website pakistaniwomen.org is also running on the Times of Geneva server. The lab's investigation reached the Twitter handle of the European Organization for Pakistani Minority (EOPM) via the website. The address of this institution, the address of EP Today and the address of the Brussels office of Srivastava Group are the same.

- Now a third player appears in this case 4NewsAgency. According to the information on its website, it is a group of four news agencies in Belgium, Switzerland, Thailand and Abu Dhabi. However, it has not been told who these four agencies are.

- The claim is that its team is working in 100 countries, but only two offices in Belgium and Geneva have been given on the website. One of them is that EP Today, Geneva Times, 4newsagency and Srivastava Group all have offices in Belgium and Geneva.

- In order to understand the link between 4newsagency, EP Today, Geneva Times and Srivastava Group, the BBC wrote an email to Disinfo Lab, in response to which all these fake media outlets were linked to this agency. The same type of content is being used on these websites.

- The Disinfo Lab says that there are 21 domains that are running from a single server and this includes the Srivastava Group name.

- The Disinfo Lab has received a letter written in 2018. Madi Sharma's non-governmental organization WESTT officially wrote a letter to Antonio Tajani, former Speaker of the European Parliament, to support EP Today's op-ed on Pakistani minorities. The organization of Madi Sharma itself organized 23 EU MPs to visit India.

- The BBC has found in its investigation that Madi Sharma writes articles on EP Today.

- A man of the same name is also writing articles on EP Today and is also working for Madi Sharma's thinktank WESTT.

What do these websites do?
- The Disinfo Lab claims that these '265 fake local news outlets' work to influence international institutions.
- In order to strengthen its credibility, NGOs provide press releases of specific protests.
- All these media outlets quote each other, print the same report on their platforms. This is done in such a way that the reader does not understand the manipulation of the news. Its job is to increase international support for India.
- To distort the image of Pakistan among the people through news and editorials.

The Srivastava group came into the limelight when 23 EU MPs visited India on a non-official visit in October this year. Madi Sharma's NGO Women's Economic and Social Think Tank (WESTT) brought European MPs to India. In his invitation to the MPs, he said that the cost of traveling will be borne by the International Institute of Non-Allied Studies (IINS) based in India.

The Institute of Non Allied Studies is a non-governmental organization founded in 1980. It is stated on the Srivastava Group website that IINS is their institution. Apart from this, some newspapers of this group also print Delhi Times (English), New Delhi Times (Hindi). However, no information has been given on the website about how much circulation of these newspapers are.

According to a report published in The Wire, Srivastava Group has several companies. But documents filed with the Registrar of Companies show that most of its companies are not doing business. They have no money.

There are a total of seven companies operating in this group, on whose board the names of Neha Srivastava and Ankit Srivastava are common.

According to the report A2N Broadcasting reported a loss of Rs 2000 last year. This company has no earnings. It has a balance of 10 thousand rupees in Citi Bank and 10 thousand in Oriental Bank.

This company does not have any big profit business.

According to the BBC, when we started exploring the address A2 / 59 in Safdarjung Enclave, we got an electoral list of the Indian Islamic Culture Center of 2018, according to which Ankit Srivastava and Neha Srivastava live at this address.

Both of them are associated with Shrivastava group. Dr. Ankit Srivastava is the Vice Chairman of this group. At the same time, Neha Srivastava is the Vice Chairperson. But this address is being claimed to be an office.

According to the BBC, after this, we searched their social media accounts and then found the Twitter profile of Ankit Srivastava. There are more than 10,000 followers on this profile and he has described himself as Editor in Chief of the New Delhi Times. The same information has been given on Ankit Srivastava's LinkedIn profile.

According to the BBC, even after several attempts, we could not talk to any representative of Srivastava Group.

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