Awareness Video on 'Robbery' Shared With a False Communal Spin

The video was created only for entertainment and educational purposes.

The video is being shared with a communal spin.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video is being shared on social media with a communal spin claiming that robbers disguised as jewellery cleaners, belonging to the Muslim community, robbed a couple off their jewelleries after making them unconscious.

However, we found the video was made only for educational purposes and had no communal angle to it.

CLAIM

One Twitter, a user shared the video along with the text in Hindi that states, "शांतिदूतो का नया कारनामा… आपकी गली में ऐसे टोपी वाले फ़क़ीर घूमते है तो … उसको गली में घुसने न दे..."

[Translation: A new feat by peacefuls. If you find these people wearing (skull) caps, don't let them enter the street.]

The term “Peacefuls” is a pejorative reference to Muslims in the context of the oft-made statement that Islam is a ‘religion of peace’.

An archive of the tweet can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The video has been shared on Facebook and Twitter along with similar claims and the archived links can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

We found another video on Facebook shared with the same claim, however, at the end of the video a disclaimer read that the video is for educational purpose only.

We could find a disclaimer at the end of the video.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Further, we also found that the timings in the CCTV footage are on loop and kept on resetting to 9:21:00 hours.

We could spot discrepancies in the CCTV timings of the video.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Next, with the help of InVid WeVerify, a video verification tool, we extracted several keyframes from the video and performed a reverse image on some of the keyframes.

A reverse image search on Google result led us to a Facebook video in a page named 'Rock on media'. The 3:04 minute video posted on 10 November has over 11,000 views at the time of writing this article.

The caption along with the video read, "BE CAREFUL WITH YOUR ONLINE FRIENDS. Thank you for watching! Please be aware that this page features scripted dramas and parodies as well. These short films are for entertainment & educational purposes only! (sic)"

At the end of the video, the disclaimer read, "This reel life video footage is published only for the purpose of educating the public by making them understand how the real world situations will be. During this video making we have taken real incidents and picturized to educate the public. Characters in the video are entertainment and education purpose only" (sic).

We have reached out to the admin of the Facebook page and the story will be updated with their response.

Clearly, a video created for educational and entertainment purposes is being shared on social media as real giving it a communal angle.

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