CLAIM
A video of a man wearing a burqa is in circulation with the claim that it shows an RSS worker who was caught wearing a burqa in a Muslim area. The message with the video then goes on to say that wherever a protest against NRC is going on, special care should be taken of such people.
A number of people shared this video on Facebook with the same claim.
The video was also shared on Twitter with this claim.
TRUE OR FALSE?
The Quint found that the video is old and has now been circulated with a false claim. While this incident actually happened, the reality is very different from what the message claims.
WHAT WE FOUND
On running a search on YouTube with the keywords 'burqa man woman', we came across the same video, uploaded by a handle called 'NYOOOZ TV' on 22 February 2019. According to the video by NYOOZ TV, the incident had happened at a bus stand in Panaji, Goa.
Picking up from here, we ran a Google search with the keywords 'burqa man woman Goa' and came across several news reports of the same incident.
PTI had reported that the incident took place on 16 February at Kadamba Transport Corporation bus stand in Panaji, when the man was caught by a passerby.
The man in question was identified as 35-year-old Virgil Bosco Fernandez, who impersonated a Muslim woman by wearing a burqa over his T-shirt and jeans and donned a wig in order to enter a women's washroom at the bus stand.
"Fernandez has been booked under Section 419 for attempting to impersonate a Muslim woman, in order to enter a ladies toilet at the KTC bus stand in Panaji," a police spokesperson had then said, according to the report.
News agency IANS also reported the same incident, while The Times of India had some more details regarding it. According to their report, Fernandes was a government servant, currently posted at the department of planning and statistics.
TRUE OR FALSE?
Therefore, it is clear that this incident has nothing to do with Muslim areas or protests against NRC, since the incident happened at Panaji in February 2019, much before anti-NRC protests had begun.
Moreover, The Quint got in touch with the Panaji Police Station, and the police told us that while the incident had occurred, investigation had shown that Fernandes was of unsound mind and no action had been taken against him. According to police, Fernandes had medical documents which all proved him to be of unsound mind.
Further, the police also confirmed that Fernandes had no RSS connections as the claim stated. Therefore, the claim is fake and an old video is being shared again.
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