Old incident from Gujarat viral as recent in the backdrop of Muharram

“गुजरात के वड़ोदरा में मुहर्रम ताजिया के लिए चंदा देने से इनकार करने पर हिन्दू व्यक्ति का मुसलमान ने कत्ल कर दिया । आखिर मीडिया इस खबर को क्यों दबा रही हैं ? क्या गुजरात भी केरल की तरह जिहादियों का गढ़ बन रहा है ?” (“A Hindu was killed in Baroda, Gujarat by a Muslim for refusing to give donation for taziya. Why is the media deliberately ignoring this story? Is Gujarat too becoming a hub for jihadis like Kerala?”- translation).

The above message has gone viral on social media along with a purported newspaper clipping in Gujarati. The clipping states that the accused Nazir Pathan is absconding, and that Vadodara is in the grip of communal tension over the killing of one Manohar Variya who refused to donate to Pathan for the Muharram taziya, following which he was repeatedly stabbed. According to this clipping, the victim was stabbed because he had refused Pathan’s request to donate for the muharram taziya.

गुजरात के वड़ोदरा में मुहर्रम ताजिया के लिए चंदा देने से इनकार करने पर हिन्दू व्यक्ति का मुसलमान ने कत्ल कर दिया ।
आखिर मीडिया इस खबर को क्यों दबा रही हैं ?

क्या गुजरात भी केरल की तरह जिहादियों का गढ़ बन रहा है ? pic.twitter.com/A3Oek6Lakg

— Pushpendra Kulshrestha (@Nationalist_Om) September 11, 2019

The above tweet by the handle @Nationalist_Om has been retweeted over 2700 times already. The claim has gone viral on Facebook, with several Hindutva pages and individual users sharing it.

FACT CHECK: NEWS FROM 2017

Alt News searched for an article with the same title as that in the purported newspaper cutting. However, this exercise yielded no result. On the basis of the information provided in the viral message and the accompanying image, Alt News used specific keywords, and found an article published in The Indian Express, dated September 13, 2017.

According to the report, a preliminary investigation had revealed that the accused was teasing the victim with a nickname which agitated the latter who slapped the accused, following which the victim was stabbed multiple times. The report also included the statement of the victim’s son who had said, “My father gave Rs 100 to Pathan as contribution to Tazia celebration two days back, but when Pathan came home on Tuesday evening in an inebriated state, my father asked him as to why he wasted the money on liquor, but Pathan got agitated and started fighting and stabbed him to death.”

We then found a Times of India report pertaining to this incident, dated September 15, 2017. Titled, ’57 Muslim families flee Vadodara after murder of Hindu man’, the TOI article reported communal unrest in Vadodara, days after the murder. About the incident, the report states, “According to the police, Pathan had approached Variya and demanded donation for tazia. When Variya refused to pay, Pathan got into arguments with him and stabbed him. The Bapod police arrested Pathan a day after the murder.”

While Alt News was unable to determine the legitimacy of the newspaper clipping, the incident in question is two years old i.e. pertaining to September 2017. Muharram was observed on September 10 this year, and this incident is being falsely shared as recent.