Religious Bias in Vaccinating People in Chhattisgarh? Clip is Old

The video is from Muzaffarnagar and shows women queuing up outside ATM.

A video showing burqa-clad women lining up in socially distanced circles along the road is being shared on social media falsely claiming that it shows Muslims lining up to get vaccinated in mosques in Chhattisgarh.

It says that the Congress-ruled state is setting up special vaccination camps for Muslims and discriminating against others, as temples and gurudwaras do not have this special arrangement.

However, we found that the video was from Muzaffarnagar in Uttar Pradesh. The video shows women lining up outside a bank to withdraw money from their Jan Dhan accounts after some rumours went around that they would not be able to withdraw the Rs 500 that they had received as direct deposit aid during the pandemic.

CLAIM

The video is shared with a Hindi caption which says that the video is from Korba, Chhattisgarh where mosques have set up vaccination camps and are exclusively vaccinating Muslims and are giving them free rations. It rhetorically asks whether such facilities are divisive and unconstitutional.

This claim was shared by various users without the video too and can be found here and here.

The Quint received this video on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

Another version of the claim that went viral earlier suggests that Muslim women had queued to collect free rations given by the government. Those claims can be found here and here on Facebook, while claims on Twitter can be found here, here and here.

The video was also shared by Sudarshan News founder Suresh Chavhanke on Facebook, where it was viewed over 3,46,000 times, and on Twitter as well, claiming that the women had lined up for “free rations”. Chavhanke later replied to his tweet to issue clarifications.

WHAT WE FOUND

We observed the video closely to help us identify the location. We found one signboard and one hoarding in the video, which clearly read ‘Muzaffarnagar’ in English and Hindi.

At the beginning of the clip, two shops – one Dr Lal’s Pathlabs and one Bank of Baroda branch – and a school named Guru Gobind Singh Public School are visible.

We used the name of the school along with ‘Muzaffarnagar’ as keywords to verify the location further, and found the school down the road from a Bank of Baroda branch in Gandhi colony, Muzaffarnagar on Google Maps.

Using InVID, a video verification tool, we got frames from the video and ran a reverse image search on them. We found the same video uploaded to YouTube on 18 April 2020, by channel “Twitter Babu”.

We also found a video report by News18 published on 20 April 2020 carrying the same clip. As per the report, people had lined outside the Bank of Baroda branch to withdraw money “after getting false information that the 500 rupees deposited into their Jan Dhan accounts could be taken back”.

It goes on to say that bank employees made everyone socially distance and explained that no such thing would happen and that their money would be safe.

We found more news reports from The New Indian Express and Amar Ujala about the incident. The government had announced direct deposits of Rs 500 for three months, into women’s Jan Dhan accounts at the onset of the pandemic in April 2020. Some rumours led these account holders to believe that this money would be taken back by the government, causing them to rush to withdraw the amount.

The Department of Financial Services had also tweeted regarding the rumours, assuring citizens that the amount could be withdrawn by the account holders as per their convenience.

Govt. ने PMJDY महिला a/c holders के खाते में 500 रु जमा किए हैं। यह अप्रैल माह के है मई, जून में भी 500-500 रु डाले जाएँगे। This amt has reached ur bank a/c & you can withdraw it any time. अफ़वाहों पर ध्यान न दें l अपने सुविधा अनुसार ATM, CSP और बैंकों से यह पैसा लें @FinMinIndia

— DFS (@DFS_India) April 9, 2020

We contacted Ram Gopal Kariyare, DSP of Korba police, who is also in-charge of handling COVID-19 related affairs who said that no such reports of anything happening like this have emerged.

Evidently, an old and unrelated video is being shared to make a false claim that the government in Chhattisgarh is vaccinating people on the basis of religion.

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