No, This is Not a Qatari Anchor Talking About 'Religious Freedom in India'

The photo shows a TV anchor in Afghanistan, who bowed her head while reading the news.

Amid the growing outrage against the comments made by the former spokespersons of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) against Prophet Muhammad, a photo of a woman in a burkha is been shared to claim that she is a Qatari anchor who expressed concerns about religious freedom in India.

As this controversy snowballed, several countries including Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Iran, and others have condemned the remarks.

However, we found that this picture is unrelated to the row and it actually shows a TV anchor in Afghanistan, who bowed her head while reading the news.

This was following an order by the Taliban, which required all female anchors in the country to cover their face while on air.

CLAIM

The photo has been widely shared across social media platforms with a claim that the woman in the photo is 'Fatima Shaikh,' a Qatari news anchor.

While most have shared the picture by just copy-pasting the same claim, a few have shared it alongside the '#HindusUnderAttackInIndia'.

Archived version of similar posts can be viewed here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

On conducting a simple reverse image search, we found the picture in an article on the website of National Public Radio (NPR), a nonprofit organisation in the US, which mentioned that the image showed TV anchor 'Khatereh Ahmadi' in Afghanistan.

This was after the Taliban enforced an order telling female anchors to cover their faces while on-air. The photo was credited to news agency The Associated Press (AP).

We could also locate the picture in the archives of AP, which provided the same details.

Further, one of the tweets, which also has the highest engagement, is from an account '@AdvisorZaidu', which mentions in its bio that 'all tweets are 100 percent fake'.

Clearly, an unrelated picture has been shared with a false claim that it shows a Qatari anchor speaking about religious freedom in India.

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