Unrelated Clips Clubbed To Claim Muslim Man Held by Police for ‘Mocking a Cow'

The viral video is not related to the clip of the man saying "cow is my mother," at the end of the video.

Fact-Check: These are three different instances and not one.

(Source: The Quint) 

A video showing a man sitting inside a car and seemingly mocking a cow is being shared on social media platforms.

• Towards the end, a video and an image are shown on the screen. The image shows a man sitting on the floor, with a police personnel standing behind him.

• While, the video showed a man being dragged by the police and saying, "Cow is our mother."

The claim: Users insinuated that a Muslim man had mocked the cow and wrote, "Abdul Bhai forgot that he is in Uttar Pradesh."

• X (formerly Twitter) user RealBababanaras shared this post on 7 November. Team WebQoof has fact-checked this user for spreading misinformation, previously. You can see those stories here and here.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

This post gathered 957.3K views at the time of writing this story. (You can see the archives here and here.)

Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false. All three visuals are from three separate instances.

• The first clip of the man mocking the cow is allegedly a Hindu, according to social media posts. The person's account is now deleted.

• The video of the man saying "cow is our mother," is from a case in Ghaziabad, where he was held in a cow smuggling case in 2022.

• The image at the end is of a case from Gurugram, where two were held for throwing meat near a temple in 2023.

What we found: CASE 1:

At first, we broke down the video into multiple screenshots in order to find separate frames of all three visuals.

• We ran a Google reverse image search on the frame of the man in the car and came across two posts on Instagram.

• The first video claimed that the person in the clip was a Hindu and not Muslim.

• A video by user Mohit Soni_Lawat from 19 September conveyed that the person's Instagram username was n___nakul_.

Here is the screenshot added by Mohit Soni Lawat in their video. 

• Another user Animesh Divyan also claimed that the person was a Hindu and stated that the person deleted the clip and apologised.

• We looked for N___nakul's page on Instagram, but it has now been deleted.

• We found no reports, which noted that a person was taken by the police for mocking a cow.

CASE 2:

• We then ran a Google reverse image search on the frame of the person being dragged by the police.

• This led us to a report shared by Aaj Tak from 28 October 2022, which carried a similar frame.

Here is the preview of the Aaj Tak report.

(Source: Aaj Tak) 

• The report stated Irshad alias Sonu from Loni was apprehended by the Ghaziabad police for cow smuggling. At the time of the arrest, he was reportedly shot by police as he attempted to escape.

• He was subsequently recorded repeatedly chanting "Cow is our mother" after being shot.

• Similarly, TV9 Bharatvarsh and News18 also reported about this incident in 2022.

• The Quint has reached out the police for further inputs and the story will be updated once the response is received.

CASE 3: Team WebQoof also looked at the visual of the person sitting with a police officer standing behind.

• With a Yandex and Google reverse image search, we came across a report by the Hindustan Times from 1 July 2023.

• It stated that two were arrested for throwing buffalo meat near a temple on the Gurugram-Faridabad Road.

• The report stated that the individuals were recognised as Nadeem and Obirul Mondal from Badhkal in Faridabad.

• Authorities stated that Nadeem was a butcher who operated a shop from his residence in Badhkal, while Mondal gathered animal waste from various butcher shops.

Here is a preview of the report.

(Source: HT)

• We have reached out to the police authorities for their inputs in this case as well.

Conclusion: Three different instances have been put together to falsely claim that a man was held by the UP police for "mocking a cow".

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