As videos and photograph relating to the Karauli violence inundate social media, a video showing a group of young men standing atop the ramparts of a mosque, waving saffron flags and chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’, is going viral on social media platforms.
Several social media users including prominent author/journalist Rana Ayyub shared the video online, identifying it as from Karauli.
Karauli Violence: What Happened
Violence and arson erupted in Rajasthan’s Karauli on Saturday (April 2) after a stone-pelting incident in Futa Kot area Main Bazaar during a bike rally held to celebrate the Nav Samvatsar or the Hindu New Year. The rally was organised by right-wing organisations, including the Vishva Hindu Parishad (VHP), the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) and the Bajrang Dal, police said.The state police arrested 46 people and detained seven others for interrogation over the violence.
The curfew, which was put in place after the Karauli violence, has been extended till April 7 considering the law and order situation. However the district administration has made arrangements for class 10 and 12 examinations, allowing students to reach their exam centres after showing their admit cards.
Fact check/ Verification
To verify if the video was really from Karauli violence, Newschecker began by searching social media for relevant information and found a clarification by the District Collector of Karauli that said that the video was not from Karauli.
To find out more, Newschecker conducted a reverse image search, which led us to a tweet on the timeline of AIMIM leader Asaduddin Owaisi retweeted by him on April 3.
The tweet written in Hindi, read “Works of disturbing the peace of the country, in Ghazipur Gahmar, former MLA Sunita Singh entered the mosque along with hundreds of supporters and beat up the worshippers, the government should take this into account against Sunita Singh.”
This made us look up videos of Ghazipur, Gahmar online. Though we did not find any articles relating to the incident, we found several tweets that shared the same video, identifying it as the incident that took place in Gahmar.
On further looking up twitter, curiously, we found a tweet by Ghazipur Police that denied the incident ever having taken place in the district.
This despite the fact that another twitter user @UzmaParveenLKO, who shared images of the mosque after the incident.
To understand more, Newschecker reached out to the RD Chaurasia, SP (Rural), Ghazipur, who confirmed that the incident took place in Ghazipur. “The incident took place on April 2 at Gahmar. The youth were taking part in a ‘Shobha yatra’, and the mosque fell on its route. When passing by the mosque, few of them started climbing the steps and then the ramparts of the mosque. They started waving the saffron flag and then started chanting ‘Jai Shri Ram’ slogans. We have registered a case and we are working on identifying the youth seen in the video.” Regarding the initial tweets from the police denying the incident, he said, “We had no information about it then. But then we investigated and found it to be from Gahmar. The report is genuine.”
Newschecker also spoke to Abhishek Pandey, a close aide of ex-MLA Sunita Singh, who confirmed that the incident was a fallout of the Shobha Yatra conducted by the politician. “We organised a shobha yatra, in which Sunita Singh also participated. Some kids broke away from the yatra and went into the local basti, climbed on the mosque and started sloganeering. We reprimanded them and made them apologise.”
Conclusion
A video of a group of youth climbing atop a mosque and waving saffron flags has been identified to be from UP’s Ghazipur as against Karauli violence as is being claimed.