CLAIM
Days after a series of blasts took place in Sri Lanka, a video of a man dressed in a burqa went viral, claiming that this was one of the bombers.
The video carried a caption saying “A Buddhist dressed as a Muslim woman caught by the Sri Lankan Police. He is one of the rouges [sic] who bombed the Sri Lankan Church.”
In the 36-second clip, the police finds a man underneath the burqa after catching him.
Sri Lanka witnessed eight blasts on Easter Sunday, 21 April, which killed at least 359, injuring hundreds more. The Islamic State, on Tuesday, 23 April, had claimed responsibility for the attack.
A senior Sri Lankan minister informed the Parliament on Tuesday that the country’s worst terror attack was carried out by local Islamist extremists in retaliation for the mosque shootings in New Zealand, citing results of the initial probe.
FACT
The claim along the viral video is false.
A reverse image search on a keyframe from the video led The Quint to an article on website called ‘Irakkamam Voice’ from 29 August 2018.
On further search of the images provided in the article, all the results with the image were from 2018, making it clear that the video was not recorded after the blasts.
The viral video has a watermark of NethNews and the news agency on 22 April denied claims of the video being that of one of the bombers, with a Facebook Post.
The website clarified that they had originally posted the story in 2018 titled ‘Man arrested for burglary in Rajagiriya’.
The claim was earlier debunked by AltNews.
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