Photos of a molester from Bangladesh and an unrelated image of hand grenades in Kashmir are being shared on Facebook with a false narrative that a Muslim Congress leader from Assam was arrested for possessing weapons while plotting to kill Hindus.
The viral misleading post in Hindi alleged, “Weapons and bullets were found at a Masjid from a trunk belonging to Assam Congress leader Amjat Ali Seb. He had planned to kill Hindus. Police have arrested him.”
(Hindi text -“असम के कांग्रेस नेता अमजात अली सेब की पेटी में हथियार और गोलियां के साथ मस्जिद से हिरासत में। हिंदुओं को मारने का कर रहा था प्लान। पुलिस ने दबोचा.)
The post received nearly 6,500 shares from the Facebook group We Support Narendra Modi, at the time of writing this story.
It is now being shared on other Facebook groups as well.
BOOM contacted Assam police who denied registering such a case at any police station in the state.
We also contacted Assam Pradesh Congress Committee (APCC) who said there was no APCC member named Ajmat Ali Seb.
“There is no big leader by the name Ajmat Ali in Assam Congress. Also I have not heard or read about any news of this sort recently,” APCC spokesman Abdul Khalique told BOOM.
A search on Google with ‘Amjat Ali Seb Congress’ also does not throw up any relevant results
A reverse image search of the photo of grenades lying beside some apples showed stories published on October 29, 2018 about a police encounter in Kashmir where three militants were arrested from Narbal area in the state.
The same image was published by many local news outlets in Kashmir (Read here and here). Wire agency PTI and an English daily Kashmir Observer also ran stories detailing the incident.
BOOM further analysed the other two images and found the police officers in the photo wearing a dark blue uniform unlike the khaki uniform worn by Indian police forces. BOOM was able to ascertain that the policemen in the photo are from Bangladesh.
Local news stories from Bangladesh showed that the man in both photos is 28-year-old Mobarak Hossain, a Madrasa teacher arrested in May this year. Mobarak was arrested for allegedly sexually harassing a 13-year-old girl who later committed suicide, according to local news reports in Bangla (Read here and here) and English newspaper The Daily Star of Bangladesh.
(This article was first published in BoomLive and has been republished here with due permission.)
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