Fact check: Is Delhi Public School selling masks to students for ₹400?

Origin 

A number of social media posts were claiming that Delhi Public School (DPS) is selling face masks to its students at the rate of ₹400. The social media posts also managed to go viral and people started sharing them in abundance which also led to the DPS branded faced masks to quickly become meme material on the internet. The post also went viral around the time where speculations about reopenings of the school with less occupancy have been doing rounds on social media. This led to an uninformed outrage amid internet users who deemed DPS to be immoral and greedy to use a pandemic to earn money. Check out what internet users were saying below - 

Delhi Public School criticised 

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But in reality, Delhi Public School has not manufactured any masks which have their branding printed on them. Mansoor Ali Khan, the board member of DPS Bangalore & Mysore, recently sat down for an interview with a news portal where he refuted the claims made by social media users. The board member stated that schools have been shut as per government orders thus it can only be defined as an act of mischief from some vendor where the photo has gone viral from. 

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Khan added furthermore that none of DPS schools has manufactured the masks. Mansoor suspects that a vendor might have done it in order to boost the sales. Whereas, the board member also states that the logo of DPS is easily available on the official website thus can be imprinted on masks without many efforts. The board of DPS has lodged a cybercrime complaint and also sent a message to parents to clarify DPS' stand on the claim. Read the message below - 

Dear parents, 

It has been brought to our notice thay some agencised are using the shcool's name and logo to sell products like masks and sanitizers as precautionary measures for school children. Kindly note that the school is not associated with such vendors. Please refrain from falling prey to these anti-social elements who see an opportunity in adverse circumstances. 

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Google Trends analysis

Various social media posts claiming that DPS is selling masks resulted in a number of people searching about the same on Google. This led to a surge of search results around topics like 'DPS Mask', 'DPS Face Mask', etc. Check it out below - 

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