Old Clip of Mahishasur Railway Station Vandalism Shared With False Communal Spin

People vandalised the Naopara Mahishasura railway station during anti-CAA protests in 2019.

The video dates back to 2019 and shows anti-CAA protesters vandalising the railway station.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Altered by The Quint)

A video of several people, armed with sticks and canes, vandalising a railway station has gone viral on social media, where users are claiming that it shows people damaging the Mahishasur railway station in Murshidabad, West Bengal, as the noise of train horns was interrupting their namaz.

An archive of this post can be seen here.

(Source: X/Screenshot)

At the time of writing this report, this post by X user Mini Razdan was viewed nearly eight lakh times.

(Archived versions of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

But...?: While the video is from Murshidabad as claimed, it dates back to 2019 and shows people vandalising the railway station while protesting against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), which was still a bill back then.

How did we find out the truth?: The Quint's WebQoof had previously debunked the same video in 2022, when it was being shared with the same claim.

• In the viral video, we can see the railway station's name as 'Naopara Mahishasur' written on a wall. The station comes under Murshidabad district of West Bengal.

One can clearly see the name of the railway station.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

• Next, we divided the video into multiple keyframes using InVID, a Google Chrome extension and followed it up with a reverse image search.

• This led us to a Facebook post from 2019 which carried similar videos from different angles. 

• It carried several videos which showed the vandalism of Naopara Mahishasura railway station, and mentioned that the reason behind the violence were anti-CAA protests.

• On comparing these clips with the viral video, we noticed the same man in a blue shirt damaging the railway station.

The same person can be seen in the old videos.

(Source: Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

• We also came across another video on YouTube, shared on 14 December 2019, titled 'Protest procession against CAB and NRC at Naopara Mahishasur station in Sagardighi'.

We could notice more similarities between this video and the viral video.

Same person can be noticed in the viral video and the 2019 videos.

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

• Next, we used 'Naopara Mahishasura railway station CAA protest' as keywords in Bengali, to look for news reports related to the vandalism.

• This led us to a report published in Bengali news portal Bartaman Patrika on 15 December 2019, which mentioned that people gathered to protest against the CAA bill at Nimatita station, Poradanga station, Naopara Mahishasur station and started vandalising it in the morning.

This is a translated version of the news report.

(Source:Bartaman Patrika/Screenshot)

Conclusion: An old video of people vandalising the Naopara Mahishasura railway station during anti-CAA protests has gone viral with a false communal claim.

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