A video showing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) MLA Yogesh Sagar having an argument with police officers has gone viral with a claim that he was protesting against 'Shiv Sena's decision of closing roads for offering namaz' in Kandivali.
We, however, found that he was not protesting against people offering namaz on the streets. The police had blocked a section of the road to contain protesting members of the Congress party as they were leading a protest march to reach Member of Parliament (MP) Gopal Shetty's house.
Sagar was opposing the police's decision of blocking the road and said that it was causing a disturbance in the commute of common people.
CLAIM
Those sharing the video said, "MLA Yogesh Sagar at Kandivali protested against Shiv Sena for closing road for namaz. All traffic including bus diverted or stopped. Raghulila Road."
Similar posts were shared with Hindi captions as well.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We conducted a keyword search with the MLA Yogesh Sagar's name and came across a Facebook post by him on 16 February.
The video caption in Marathi translated to "The Maha Vikas Aghadi (MVA), a coalition of many political parties, police (referring to Maharashtra police) must stop harassing civilians. This video is from the day when Congress had protested near the house of MP Shetty. This had caused inconvenience to the public. Some people have tried to link this video to some parties and prayers, and I condemn it."
We also found a tweet by the official Twitter of BJP Mumbai who also tweeted the video on 16 February.
Further, we also looked for news reports and found the video published on the YouTube channel of TV9 Marathi, which said that there was tight bandobast as Congress workers went to protest near Shetty's home, and Sagar got into an argument with the police as he saw police barricades on the road in Kandivali.
We also spoke to a senior police officer from Kandivali police station who refuted the claim about 'closure of roads for offering namaz' and said that there was police bandobast to maintain law and order as Congress members were protesting near Shetty's home, adding, no cases were filed against Sagar.
Further, we also looked for news reports, if any, about road closure for offering namaz in Mumbai or any namaz row in the city, and couldn't find any.
Clearly, a video that showed the BJP MLA removing police barricades and arguing with them is being shared with a communal spin.
(With inputs from Arpita Ghosh.)
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