A photograph showing a massive gathering of people beneath a flyover has been shared on social media with the claim that people welcomed All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) chief Asaduddin Owaisi at Uttar Pradesh Gate in Ghaziabad.
Owaisi is currently touring Western UP ahead of the assembly elections in 2022.
The image has gained hundreds of shares from several pro-AIMIM Facebook pages – Md IRFAN – AIMIM, AIMIM ( मिशन बंगाल ) and असदुद्दीन ओवैसी साहब का अपना ग्रुप.
It has also been shared on Twitter.
सभी को आजमा चुके हैं इस बार सिर्फ अपने आप को वोट देना है #यूपी_में_ओवैसी इंशाअल्लाह pic.twitter.com/vCjMkE7lxp
— Nikhat khan (@nikhat69) July 15, 2021
Image from Bangladesh
Alt News had debunked a similar photograph when it was shared in 2019 as a protest against the controversial Citizenship Amendment Act. Upon reverse-searching the photograph on Yandex, we had found several results, according to which the image is from Chittagong, Bangladesh.
Alt News had also found a video uploaded on YouTube on November 10, 2019, titled, ‘আলহামদুলিল্লাহ লাখো আশেকে রাসুলগনের ঢল,jasne julus..chittagong’. The place seen in the video was the same as that shown in the image shared on social media. While the video is no longer available, a comparison from our earlier fact-check is below.
Jashn-e-Julus refers to a festive gathering of Muslim devotees. According to the now-deleted video description this video of November 10, 2019, is from the city of Chittagong in Bangladesh. It may be noted that November 10, 2019, was celebrated as Eid Milad Un Nabi.
We further performed a time-search on Google with the keywords ‘জশনে জুলুস ২০১৯’ (Jashn Julus 2019) and were led to news reports (1, 2) from two years ago that carry similar images.
Thus, the image shared widely as a massive gathering in Ghaziabad for AIMIM leader Asaddudin Owaisi is actually from Chittagong, Bangladesh and pertains to a religious gathering in November 2019. It may be pointed out that large gatherings were also witnessed during Owaisi’s visit. An event where he was inaugurating a party office in Mussoorie, Dhaulana constituency, had to be cancelled due to crowding amid COVID.
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