A photo which shows two men wearing saffron scarves and holding sticks while walking with police personnel is being shared linking it to the violence that broke out in Delhi's Jahangirpuri on the occasion of Hanuman Jayanti on 16 April.
The communal clashes erupted when a Shobha Yatra procession passed along the route where a mosque is located. A quarrel eventually led to stone pelting and firing that injured nine people, including eight policemen.
Till now, 25 people have been arrested in the case.
However, we found that the photo is from 2020 when two people, referred to as "COVID-19 warriors" by the police, were seen walking with the Uttar Pradesh police in Budaun.
Speaking to The Quint, Budaun Additional Superintendent of Police (ASP), City, Praveen Singh Chauhan, confirmed that the photo was from the Jalandhari Sarai locality in Budaun.
CLAIM
The photo is being shared along with the claim, "हाथमे तलवार लेकर दिल्ली पुलिस की रक्षा करते धर्मरक्षक."
(Translation: Protectors of the Hindu religion with swords in their hands along with Delhi police.)
An archive of the tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND
A Google reverse image search on the photo led us to multiple tweets that were posted in 2020.
A Twitter user had posted two photos saying that it is from Uttar Pradesh's Budaun. The tweet was posted on 20 April 2020.
The tweet was posted on 20 April 2020.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
We also found a video of the photos posted by the user named Saba Khan in 2020 where the men can be seen walking along with the police personnel.
The caption of the tweet says that the video is from Budaun but the identity of the persons wearing saffron scarves was not known.
Further, while scrolling through the profile of the user, we found a tweet by Budaun police from 20 April 2020.
A user had quote-tweeted the video by Saba Khan, to which Budaun police replied that the Station House Officer (SHO) of Kotwali police station had said that both the persons seen in the photo were "COVID-19 warriors" who were walking with the police and identified them as Mukesh Kumar and Sunil Gurjar.
They had visited the locality and appealed to people to stay inside their homes and download the Aarogya Setu app.
An archive of the tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
Further, we reached out to Budaun Additional Superintendent of Police (SP), City, Praveen Singh Chauhan who told The Quint that the men seen in the video were walking along with police in Jalandhari Sarai locality to appeal to the people to stay at homes. However, it isn't clear what were they holding in their hands.
Clearly, an old photo from Uttar Pradesh is being shared on social media with the false claim that it is related to the Jahangirpuri violence.
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