A video showing bundles of cash being counted by some officials is being shared with a claim that the money was seized during a raid by the National Investigation Agency (NIA) at a Popular Front of India (PFI) office in Kerala.
The claim comes after the NIA raided offices and homes of PFI leaders in at least 15 states between 22 and 27 September. A day after the second raid, the Ministry of Home Affairs (MHA) banned the organisation and its associates, which lead to its disbanding.
However, we found that the viral video was from Kolkata, where the Enforcement Directorate (ED) officials raided six locations in the city and recovered around 18 crores in cash from the promoters of a mobile gaming application called 'E-Nuggets'.
CLAIM
The caption of the viral video said, "Money seized by NIA in PFI office in Kerala (sic)".
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
Archives of more such posts from Facebook and Twitter can be found here, here and here.
We also received the video as a query on our WhatsApp tipline.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We extracted the keyframes of the video using InVID, a Google Chrome extension, and performed a reverse image search on some of the them. We supplemented the search with keywords such as "cash seized", "NIA", and "PFI".
While going through the search results, we came across a news report published by Hindustan Times on 11 September, which had an image that had the same bed as seen in the viral video.
The image was credited to the news agency PTI. We located the photograph on PTI and compared it with the viral image.
Comparison of the viral video with PTI image.
(Source: PTI/Twitter/Altered by The Quint)
According to the report, ED officials had recovered around 18 crores in cash from six different locations in Kolkata in connection with a money-laundering case related to a mobile gaming application.
Among those who were raided was businessman Nesar Ahmed Khan.
According to ED officials, his son Amir Khan had launched the application 'E-Nuggets' and is the main accused in the case.
We also found a similar report in The Times of India.
NDTV also put out a video report on the ED raid, and the viral video could be seen at around the 1:11 mark.
Evidently, an unrelated raid conducted by the ED in Kolkata is being shared as an NIA raid on PFI in Kerala.
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