It’s going to be a year on June 14th and Sushant Singh Rajput’s fans are still fighting on social media to know what led to his mysterious death. Last year, there were many theories related to his death that surfaced on various news channels, and social media got influenced by the information that was running on these news features.

In a recent development, Aaj Tak, the Hindi channel of the India Today group, has been asked by the NBSA (News Broadcasting Standard Authority) to air a public apology on their channel on the 23rd of April for spreading fake news about Sushant. Aaj Tak has also been asked to pay a fine of Rs 1 lac for the same. This decision comes after the NBSA rejected the review petition that had been filed by Aaj Tak in the case.

Rejecting Aaj Tak channel's review petition, News Broadcasting Standards Authority (NBSA) asks @aajtak to air an apology on April 23 at 8PM for its misreporting about #SushanthSinghRajput death and imposes a fine of Rupees one lakh.#SSR #aajtak pic.twitter.com/HYiIY4u6EK

Last year, the authority had registered a case against the channel for sensationalizing his death while CBI was still investigating the case. The channel was targeted for running insensitive tag lines about Sushant and also for attributing fake tweets as the final words of Sushant Singh Rajput.

“I fought back hard with life. I will be deleting these tweets in a while so just some of you know that I’m done with this mediocre success. I don’t want fame anymore. It's all so peaceful yet so disturbing to handle,” one ‘tweet’ read.

In another, the ‘tweet’ read: “We men are not asked about our health, our mental state, our lives, our thoughts. We are not treated that way. I know I have been through a lot lately. I have been tired of trying so hard. It's been a long journey with you people. I don’t know why I am tweeting this….”

Here’s the screenshot of the tweet that was shown on the channel:

© Aaj Tak

The images gained traction, with Aaj Tak running them as a part of its news broadcast. However, the news portal later deleted it from its social media accounts on Facebook and Twitter. But by that time the damage was done as people started to point out it was fake because the font didn’t match the Twitter font.

For this misinformation, Aaj Tak has been asked to air an apology on 23.4.2021, at 8.00 pm. The text has already been given which they would have to translate in Hindi before airing it on Aaj Tak.

Here’s the text:

“Aaj Tak apologizes that while reporting on the incidents relating to the suicide of Sushant Singh Rajput, we had run certain tweets on Aaj Tak channel and wrongly reported the screenshots calling them real and attributing them as the actor's last tweets. By doing so, we have violated Clause 1 of the "Specific Guidelines Covering Reportage" relating to "Accuracy" which states that information should be gathered first-hand from more than one source, if possible; reports received from news agencies should be attributed and where possible be verified; allegations should be reported accurately as made and errors of fact should be corrected at the earliest, giving sufficient prominence to the broadcast of the correct version of fact(s).”

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