Hindu Women Masquerade as Muslims at CAA Protests? No, Fake Claim!
The message claims that two burqa-clad women were shouting pro-Pakistan slogans at the anti-CAA protest in Lucknow.
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CLAIM
A video is being shared on Twitter with the claim that it shows two women, named Mansi and Pooja, dressed in burqas and masquerading as Muslim women at an anti-CAA protest. The message, which was shared with the video, says that these two women were shouting slogans of ‘Pakistan Zindabad’ in a crowd of women sitting at the anti-CAA, NRC and NPR protest at Lucknow’s Ghanta Ghar.
Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad was among those sharing the video.
An archived version of the tweet can be seen here.
In the video, the two women can be seen surrounded by police. They also tell the police that their names are Mansi and Pooja and that their father’s name is Munna.
Ahmad’s tweet had over 1.3K retweets and 2.2K likes at the time this story was published. It also had over 14.8K views.
Many others shared the same video.
The video had also gone viral on Facebook with a similar caption.
TRUE OR FALSE?
While the video is real, the claim being made is false. These two women wore burqas and masqueraded as Muslim women. The incident, however, is from 2017 and is not related to the ongoing anti-CAA, NRC and NPR protests.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
Using the software Invid, The Quint broke down the video into keyframes and then ran a reverse search of the individual frames. One of the frames led us to a video uploaded on YouTube on 22 November 2017. The video, which is the same as the one being shared now, was published with the title ‘uttar pradesh local body election two fake girl reached polling booth in burka police shocked’. It had been uploaded by a YouTube handle called Prabhat Khabar.
This indicates that the video is not related to anti-NRC protests at Lucknow’s Ghanta Ghar.
On conducting a reverse search on more images, we came across two news reports that provided some context to the incident.
One report dated 24 November 2017, by a Hindi website called Rajneeti Today, carried photos of the same incident and said that it had taken place in Uttar Pradesh. The report also said that these two women had come to vote wearing burqas and were trying to cast fake votes. The video had gone viral at that time, according to the report.
The Quint found another news report by a Hindi website called Prabhat Khabar, which placed the incident in UP’s Gonda and said that these two women, who later identified themselves as sisters, Mansi Gupta and Pooja Gupta, had gone to vote at the Bharatiya Inter College in Gonda’s Katara Bazaar during the civic elections. According to the report, when questioned by the police, they neither had an answer as to why they had come to vote wearing burqas, nor did the photos on their IDs match their faces.
Therefore, it is clear that the incident has nothing to do with Hindu women dressing up as Muslim women and shouting pro-Pakistan slogans at the anti-NRC protests. It is evident that the incident happened in 2017 during local body polls in Uttar Pradesh. Thus, the claim being made with the video is completely false.
(This story was earlier debunked by Alt News.)
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