Unrelated Clip of Boy Offering Namaz on Road Falsely Linked to Karnataka Poll

The video predates the Karnataka elections by at least four months and was not taken in India.

A video showing a young boy offering namaz in the middle of a busy street, blocking traffic is being shared across social media platforms.

What are users claiming?: The video is being shared to claim that it shows an incident from Karnataka, after Congress won the state's Assembly polls.

The Quint received a query for this video's verification on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

(Archives of more such claims can be seen here, here and here.)

But...?: We were able to trace the video back to 10 January, nearly four months before the 2023 Karnataka elections' results were declared.

• Other details in the video helped us further determine that the video was possibly taken in UAE.

How did we find out?: Using relevant keywords, we looked for more details regarding the viral video.

• This led us to a page on Nigeria's Legit News website, which had published a report on the video on 27 March earlier this year.

• The page carried a clearer version of the viral video which was first shared on TikTok.

• Accessing the video via a virtual private network (VPN), we saw that it was shared by a user with the username '@Ajom75uddin' on 10 January.

Where is the video from?: In the TikTok video, we noticed a few details pertaining to the location of the video.

• The person standing next to the praying boy wears a shirt, which carries the words 'Security' in English along with some Arabic text on the back.

• This indicated that the video was from an Arabic-speaking country in the Middle East.

• We also noticed a delivery associate wearing an orange t-shirt, riding a two-wheeler with an orange and yellow box on it.

• Taking a cue from this, we used keywords on Google to help identify the company.

• One such search led us to a photo on stock image website Alamy, which had a photo of a delivery associate in similar clothing.

• Its caption mentioned the company's name as Talabat, adding that the photo was from Dubai, UAE.

• One can see the similarities between this stock photo and a screenshot from the viral video.

• We then looked at the 'Our Story' section on Talabat's website, where its blog said that it operated in Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Egypt, Oman, Bahrain, and Jordan. 

• Lastly, we looked for Ajom75uddin's social media profiles.

• According to their Facebook profile, the user is based out of Dubai, UAE.

We saw that the same video was shared on this profile on 10 January. We have reached out to the user and the story will be updated once we hear back from them.

Conclusion: While we could not independently verify the location of the video, we can confirm that the video is not from India and that it predates the 2023 Karnataka elections.

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