Fact-Check: Old, Unrelated Photos Falsely Linked To Communal Violence in Haryana

All photos are at least four years old and are not related to the ongoing communal violence in parts of Haryana.

Old photos of arson and riots are being falsely linked to the ongoing communal violence which has hit the eastern parts of Haryana.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

A set of photos has gone viral on social media amid arson, riots and communal violence which has spread across Haryana's Nuh, Gurgaon and Mewat areas.

The claim: The photos are being shared with text in Hindi, which instigates the "brave Hindus of Haryana" to block roads, "hold the whole of Delhi hostage," and challenge the government.

• The claim users slurs to refer to Muslims, asking Hindus whether they will just sit and get "beaten up all around" and be called rioters for raising Jai Shri Ram slogans.

An archive of this tweet can be seen here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

(Archives of more claims on social media can be seen here, here and here.)

Is it true?: None of the photos in the claim are recent.

• Two of the photos show violence during anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur in 2019.

• One of the photos shows security personnel in Haryana's Panchkula, which dates back to 2017.

• The last photo shows a burning, upturned car, and dates back to 2013 and shows visuals from the National Capital Region (NCR) during a Bharat Bandh.

Latest updates on Haryana violence: Communal clashes broke out in Haryana's Nuh district on Monday, 31 July, after stones were reportedly pelted at Vishwa Hindu Parishad's (VHP) 'Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra'.

• The violence has claimed six lives and left at least 12 police personnel injured as on 2 August.

• Violence and arson have spread across the state, reaching Gurugram – where a Naib Imam of a mosque was killed – and Nuh, Sohna, Palwal and Badshahpur.

• Monu Manesar's name has come up at the centre of the violence that broke out in Nuh during VHP's procession.

• Section 144 has been imposed in Gurugram and Nuh by the administration, with all schools and colleges being ordered to remain shut in Gurugram and Faridabad.

• Apart from this, mobile internet services have also been suspended in some areas.

How did we find out?: We ran reverse image searches on the photos and found that they were all old and unrelated to the ongoing violence in Haryana.

Photo 1

This photo shows security personnel in standing near small blazes.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

A reverse image search led us to an article published by The Times of India on 26 August 2017, which carried the same photo.

TOI's report was published in 2017.

(Source: Times of India/Altered by The Quint)

• The article discussed violence that broke out in Haryana's Panchkula when Dera Sacha Sauda chief Gurmeet Ram Rahim Singh was convicted in a rape case.

• An article by Firstpost also carried the same photo. Both publications carried the byline of news agency Press Trust of India (PTI).

• Next, we looked for this photo in PTI's archives.

• Here, we found that the same photo had been uploaded to PTI on 25 August 2017.

We found the photo on PTI's archives.

(Source: PTI/Altered by The Quint)

Photo 2

This photo shows a security personnel standing near a burning, upturned car.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

On carrying out a reverse image search on this photo, we came across a photo story by NDTV which was published on 20 February 2013.

The article which carried the photo, was published in 2013.

(Source: NDTV/Altered by The Quint)

• The article showed photos of factories and cars being attacked in Delhi and Noida, Uttar Pradesh, during a two-day Bharat Bandh called by 11 trade unions.

• The strike was called as unions demanded solid measures for ensuring jobs, controlling inflation and the enforcement of labour laws, reported India Today.

• The same photo was also seen in a photo story by Wall Street Journal in 2013.

The photo was also seen in a Wall Street Journal photo story.

(Source: Wall Street Journal/Screenshot)

Photo 3

This photo shows security personnel at an intersection.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

The reverse image search results for this photo took us to an article by Scroll which was published on 26 December 2019.

• In this article, the photo was carried with the caption mentioning that it showed "police personnel during demonstrations against the Citizenship Amendment Act in Kanpur on December 21."

• The report attributed this photo to Agence France-Presse (AFP).

• We came across the same photos on news agency AFP's Twitter account, which had shared it on 21 December 2019, with text mentioning that thousands of people had gathered to protest the "new citizenship law" and the unrest had left "21 dead so far."

We found the same photo in a Times of India article, which was also published in December 2019.

Photo 4

This photo shows police personnel engaged in beating a person. 

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot) 

The reverse image search results showed us a report by Times of India that was published on 21 December 2019.

• The report was about the Citizenship Amendment Act protests that took place in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh where a protestor died and several were injured.

The incident took place in the Babupurwa area of Kanpur. 

(Source: TOI/Altered by The Quint)

• Thereafter, we checked the original source of the image and came across several reports that carried the same visual and noted the Press Trust of India (PTI) as the main source.

• We explored the PTI pictures archives and found the viral photo, whose caption mentioned that the incident occurred on 20 December 2019.

The incident took place on 20 December, 2019. 

(Source: PTI/Screenshot) 

Conclusion: In light of the violence and tensions in Haryana, unrelated and old visuals have been linked to the communal clashes. All four images in the viral claim are unrelated to the violence that has erupted in Haryana.

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