Old Clip From Hyderabad Falsely Linked To Communal Clashes in Mumbai’s Mira Road
The video shows Hyderabad Police arresting people who protested against BJP MLA T Raja Singh in August 2022.
The video shows Hyderabad police arresting people who participated in protests against T Raja Singh in 2022.
(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Altered by The Quint)
A video which shows police personnel dressed in riot gear forcefully dragging people on the streets and out of their homes is being widely shared across social media platforms.
The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows police personnel knocking down doors and arresting "rioters for attacking Hindus celebrating Ram Mandir" in Mumbai's Mira Road.
This comes against the backdrop of incidents of communal violence which broke out on 22 January in Mira Road, the day of the consecration of the idol at Ayodhya's Ram Mandir.
An archive of this post can be seen here.
How did we find out?: We cropped the video to remove the text, and uploaded it to InVID, a video verification extension on Google Chrome, which divided the video into multiple frames.
On running a reverse image search on one of them, we came across a post by former journalist Paul Oommen.
Oomen, who was previously working with The News Minute, shared this video on 25 August 2022, as one from Hyderabad.
The journalist shared this video on 25 August 2022.
Taking a cue from this, we ran a relevant keyword search which led us to TNM's video carrying the same visuals.
According to its description, the video shows police arresting protesters who were demanding the arrest of BJP MLA Raja Singh over derogatory against Prophet Mohammed.
Though Singh was arrested on 22 August, he was released on bail the same day.
This led to protests in many areas of Hyderabad's Old City, after which the police "barged into homes" and detained some people after a few "youths pelted stones at the cops," it mentioned.
The Quint also reported on these events, stating that Singh was arrested for the second time on 25 August.
In a statement, the police said that Singh was "habitually delivering provocative and inflammatory speeches" which were "leading to public disorder."
A day prior to his second arrest, the Telangana Police detained at least 50 Muslim youths for protesting against the controversial remarks.
Team WebQoof had previously debunked this video in 2022, when it was falsely shared as a video of people being arrested for protesting against the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (RSS) in Uttar Pradesh.
Conclusion: An old video of Hyderabad police dragging people out of their homes and detaining them is being falsely linked to the communal clashes which broke out in Mumbai's Mira Road on 22 January.
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