Video From UP Falsely Shared as 'Delhi Government School Converted Into Madrasa'

A viral video of a group of men accompanied by police entering a classroom full of people is being shared to claim that the video shows a government primary school in Delhi.

The claim targets Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal, accusing him of converting government schools into madrasas, which are schools of religious instruction in Islam.

However, we found that the video is from Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad and has nothing to do with Delhi. In the video, the people and the police are seen entering a government primary school in Vijay Nagar, Ghaziabad on 19 November, which was a holiday.

CLAIM

The video is being shared with the text in Hindi, which claims that the video is from a school in Delhi, where Kejriwal is allowing government schools to turn into madrasas. Some versions of the claim also use derogatory terms and ask whether Kejriwal will do the same in Uttarakhand.

At the time of writing this article, this post by user Chander Bhushan Rajput was shared over 4,200 times.

Archived versions of the claim across Facebook and Twitter can be seen here, here, here and here.

The viral claim was also shared by BJP Delhi spokesperson Khemchand Sharma, and its archive can be viewed here.

We also saw that the video was being shared on YouTube with a similar claims, and can be accessed here, here and here.

The Quint received multiple queries regarding the video and its claim on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

In the comments section under one of the claim posts, we saw many users noting that the video was not from Delhi, but was from Uttar Pradesh.

Further, in the video, a person can be clearly heard saying "Facebook Live कर दो" (go live on Facebook).

Taking a clue from these two things, we searched Facebook using relevant keywords, and were led to a video posted by one Yogesh Sharma on 19 November. The video was shared with text in Hindi, which translates to –

"Today in Vijay Nagar, Ghaziabad across Sanjeevani Hospital, some Muslim Jihadis were cooking meat and offering namaz in a primary school. My team and I reached the spot, caught them red-handed and turned them over to the police."

Going through the user's Facebook timeline, we found that he had shared another, clearer version of the video, which was first uploaded as a 'live' video by one 'Dr Ashutosh Gupta'.

Here, at the beginning of the video, a person can be heard saying "primary government school in Vijay Nagar". Around the one-minute-and-thirteen seconds mark, one can also see that the school's signage reads 'Ghaziabad'.

The Quint spoke to police personnel from the Vijay Nagar police station, who told us that the incident was from there and took place on Friday, 19 November.

They added that the school's management had not filed any complaint regarding this incident, so there was no case, noting that the people in the video were sent back to their homes as they did not have permission to gather there.

Clearly, the viral video is not from Delhi as claimed, but is from Vijay Nagar in Uttar Pradesh's Ghaziabad.

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