FACT CHECK: Man gave off as ‘bhakt’ because he waved the Indian flag on Capitol Hill, who was apparently a fan of Shashi Tharoor

CLAIM
One of the men who waved the Indian flag through the pro-Trump mob on Wednesday during the siege of the Capitol Hill is described as ‘bhakt’ (a usage term used by anti-BJP people to support those who support Prime Minister Narendra Modi) to describe. a portion of social media users.
In a Twitter handle called ‘Hindutva Watch’, three images appear, two of which show the same Indian-flagged man apparently outside Capitol Hill, and in the third image a man waving both the saffron flag and the American flag.

The tweet provoked a lot of reactions, and many people dismissed the men in the photos as ‘bhakts’.

Another user describe the men as ‘bloody chaste Indians’, ‘Brahman savarana castes’, ‘wannabe whites’, etc.

One user referred to the men as’ Hindutva rioters‘

A handle called India Resists, refers to the men holding the Indian flag and saffron flag as’ RSS thugs‘

TRUTH
One of the men commonly featured in the first two images, with Indian flag, was identified as Vincent Xavier, a Roman Catholic and not Hindu. He is a staunch supporter of Congress leader Shashi Tharoor and a constant critic of Modi.
The third image is from August 5 last year when a man Ayodhya Ram Mandir celebrated bhoomi pujan by waving saffron flag outside the US capital.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY
Xavier tweeted a set of images clicked at Capitol Hill on Wednesday, where we can see the Indian flag.

He said people of different nations and races, who believe there was massive voter fraud, joined the rally on Wednesday in solidarity with Trump.
In the now-removed Facebook posts, Xavier posted several photos of his march to Capitol Hill.
Here are the screenshots of the same tweeted by a warning Twitter user.

From this it can be clearly deduced that one of the men as ‘bhakt’ for waving the Indian flag and Xavier, is the same person.
Xavier describes himself as ‘a practicing Roman Catholic Syrian Christian’, so certainly not a ‘Hindu’ and by extension not a ‘bhakt’.

To dig further, we found several of his posts, where he is apparently an ardent supporter of Congress MP Tharoor.

On April 11, 2015, he even posted a picture of himself having lunch with Tharoor in Washington DC.

He regularly criticizes Prime Minister Modi on Twitter.

He is even critical of the Hindu right in the BJP.

News portal The Quint profiled Xavier in one of their posts.
Ironically, Tharoor quoted a tweet from BJP’s Varun Gandhi and those waving Indian flags on Capitol Hill called Indians with the same mentality as the ‘Trumpist mob’. He said the Indian flag was a warning to us all.

The third image tweeted by Hindutva Watch, where a man can be seen holding a saffron flag, has nothing to do with the siege of Capitol Hill. Using reverse image search, we found that it was published on August 6, 2020 by various news websites such as Economic Times and Outlook.

The statue is endorsed as’ people from the Indian community take out a table on ‘Ayodhya’s Shri Ram Mandir’ around the American Capitol Hill to celebrate the pioneering event of the Washington Temple and is attributed to the news agency PTI.
VERDICT
Times Fact Check found that one of the men waving the Indian flag during the Capitol Hill siege by Trump loyalists, falsely by a section of social media like bhakt, Hindutva riot, RSS thug etc. He is indeed a fan of Shashi Tharoor and Modi critic.
It was also found that an image of Ayodhya Ram Mandir bhoomi pujan celebrations was falsely transmitted in the US last year as ‘bhakts’ participating in the siege of Capitol Hill.
UPDATE: In an earlier version of this story, we mentioned that Tharoor deleted his tweet, but the tweet still remains as indicated by him. The same was added to the story.