In the wake of unidentified gunmen killing civilians in Kashmir, including victims from minorities communities, several social media accounts have shared two photos. Both the images show the same group of men in white laid down in a row. Some words are written on their clothes. The images are shared along with English and Urdu texts that allege they were shot in Kashmir.
قال صلي الله عليه وسلم :
((ليسَ منا من لم يهتم بأمور المسلمين))#انقذوا_كشمير#كشمير_تباد#الهندوسية_تذبح_المسلمين#india_is_the_terrorist_country #help_kashmir#Modi_is_a_terrorist #save_kashmir#free_kashmir#UnitedNationsHumanRights pic.twitter.com/l7dLU3bWBe— محمد فكري (@mf66563806) October 9, 2021
A user tweeted in Urdu, “Communications have been cut off in Kashmir. They intend to commit genocide.”
This image was also tweeted along with English language text (1, 2, 3). The following tweets gained close to 500 retweets cumulatively.
That making me heart breaking to see innocent muslims be killed from terrorist people 💔💔#SAVE_KASHMIR #help_kashmir #كشمير_تباد #أنقذوا_مسلمي_الهند #انقذوا_مسلمي_كشمير #Kashmir #MuslimLivesMatter pic.twitter.com/ez1UMkcYUy
— zvxbts (@ZriouileZineb) October 8, 2021
That making me heart breaking to see innocent muslims be killed from terrorist people💔💔😔.#SAVE_KASHMIR
#كشمير_تباد
#انقذوا_مسلمي_كشمير pic.twitter.com/VoiJu1I7pe— Jenin98 (@ninplas98) October 9, 2021
Old image from anti-CAA protest in Maharashtra
A closer look at the viral images shows that a placard placed on one of the men reads “CAA NRC”.
A reverse image search on Bing revealed that the viral image was published by a Hindi-language website called JJP News in February 2020. As per the report, this image is from a protest in the Maharashtra based city of Aurangabad.
We also found that National Coordinator Social Media NSUI Sabir Saifi Rajdhan tweeted the image in February 2020 along with the hashtag Aurangabad.
#औरंगाबाद
काले कानून के खिलाफ कफ़न पहन कर,
इतिहास में पहली बार इस तरीके के आंदोलन देखने को मिल रहा है..!सरफरोशी की तमन्ना अब हमारे दिल में है,
देखना है जोर कितना बाजू -ए- कातिल में है !!#REJECT_CAA_NRC_NPR #TrumpInIndia#GoBackTrump #Ahmedabad #an pic.twitter.com/XQjnFJfG8j— Sabir Saifi Rajdhan (@saifisabir155) February 24, 2020
This image was earlier debunked by AFP in March. In addition to social media posts of images from 2020, they also found a video of the 2020 protest on YouTube.
To conclude, visuals from an anti-CAA protest in Aurangabad from February 2020 were falsely linked to violence in Kashmir.
