A video of a large group of people offering namaz on a road in Delhi is going viral with the claim that it shows Muslims violating the coronavirus lockdown imposed in India at the moment. However, The Quint found that it is an old video from before the lockdown was imposed and is being shared with a false claim.
CLAIM
The video is made from a car, with a man saying that this is happening in Delhi’s Patparganj and questioning whether this does not violate the lockdown and should be stopped. He also asks whether these people are not afraid of coronavirus.
The message being shared with the video reads thus: “यह हालात दिल्ली के पटपरगंज रोड पर जो मस्जिद बनी हुई है, सरेआम कानून की धज्जियां उड़ाई जा रही है, केजरीवाल बोल रहा है आप हमें सुझाव दो, हमें क्या करनी चाहिए, शर्म आनी चाहिए ऐसी सरकार को!”
(Translation: This is the situation at the mosque which is situated on Patparganj Road in Delhi, the law is being completely disregarded there. Kejriwal is asking us to give him our suggestions about what we should do, shame on such a government!)
The video is going viral on Facebook with this message.
The video was also heavily shared on Twitter with the same claim.
WHAT WE FOUND
On running a reverse image search on the video using Invid, we found that a shorter version of the same video had been uploaded to Twitter on 23 March.
This made it clear that the video was not recent but from before 24 March, i.e., from before the time the lockdown was imposed in India, which came into effect from 25 March midnight.
On searching for the video on Facebook with the keywords “दिल्ली नमाज कानून”, we came across a slightly longer version of the same video posted on the platform by a page called Arjun Kr. Singh on 21 March.
An archived version of this post can be seen here.
In this longer version, one can hear the unseen speaker in the video saying that the date of the video recording is the 20th, ostensibly 20 March, since the video was uploaded on 21 March. Therefore, this makes it clear that this namaz offering took place before the lockdown was imposed and is not from now.
We were also able to confirm that the video is indeed from Delhi as the speaker says, as a barricade of Delhi Police can be seen in the video itself.
Therefore, an old video is being used to propagate the false claim that Muslims are violating lockdown rules in Delhi by offering namaz in large groups.
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