The photograph of a deceased elderly man is being shared with a claim that it shows the recent death of a farmer during the ongoing protests in Delhi over the new farm laws.
However, we found that the image has been on the internet from at least 2018, much before the farmers’ Delhi Chalo protests started.
CLAIM
The photo is viral with a Hindi caption that reads, “दुखी मन से बता रहा हूं। दिल्ली किसान मोर्चे में एक और किसान भाई शहीद हो गए , उनके इस शहादत को मै कोटि कोटि नमन करता हूँ।”
[Translation: I have to say this with a heavy heart. Another farmer brother has been martyred in the Delhi farmers’ protests, I pay my respects to his martyrdom.]
The image was massively viral on both Facebook and Twitter.
Agricultural activist Ramandeep Singh Mann, who often writes about the farmers’ protests, also fell for the viral image and posted it on his Twitter handle, but later took it down. However, close to 800 people liked the image before it was taken down.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
Upon conducting a reverse image search, we found posts on Facebook with the same image that went back to 2018.
One of the posts had a caption, which when translated from Punjabi, read, “This old man, who is about 70 years old, his dead body is lying on Bohri Chowk of Tarn Taran.[sic.] The person has not been identified.”
As per news reports, at least 25 farmers have lost their lives since 26 November when the protests began.
The Quint could not independently verify the location of the photograph or identify the elderly man in the image. However, we were able to verify that image has been present on the internet since at least 2018, much before the farmers’ protests started in Delhi.
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