A photo is being shared on social media claiming it is a hoarding of CMR shopping mall promoting love jihad in Karnataka. The photo shows a skull-capped man posing with a woman in a Hindu traditional saree. The post claims that the CMR shopping mall is promoting love jihad by offering 10% to 50% offers to Muslim men who bring Hindu girls along with them. A few other users were sharing the same photo claiming it is a recent one from Telangana. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: An image of a hoarding of CMR shopping mall endorsing love jihad, in Karnataka.
Fact: The photo shared in the post shows an old hoarding placed by CMR Telangana Group as part of their Ramzan campaign in 2019. CMR Telangana Group issued an apology and removed all their hoardings after the outrage from various groups in 2019. The photo shared in the post is old and is not from Karnataka. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, the same photo was found shared by many news pages and Facebook users in 2019. A few of those posts can be seen here, here, and here. All these news sites and users mentioned that Raja Singh, a BJP member of the Telangana Legislative Assembly representing the Goshamahal Assembly Constituency in Hyderabad, had slammed CMR Shopping Mall over their controversial banner put out as part of their Ramzan campaign. On observing the photo carefully, at the bottom of the hoarding, one could see the names of various branches of CMR shopping malls in Telangana. The banner specifically mentions the CMR branches located in Patni Center, near Manju Theatre in Secunderabad, Malkajgiri, Siddipet, and Mahbubnagar.
When we searched the internet for further sources using relevant keywords, we found an apology note issued by the CMR Shopping Mall on 31 May 2019. The statement issued by the CMR Shopping Mall states, “Apologies for the blunder from the entire CMR Telangana Group. We have no intentions of hurting any religious sentiments or create any distinction. We support all religions and respect every community with no bias. All the hoardings have been removed and we assure to not repeat anything of this sort in future. CMR Shopping mall Andhra Pradesh is in no way associated or related with this”.
Many users shared the Telugu apology press note issued by the CMR Shopping Mall in 2019. The CMR Shopping Mall Andhra Pradesh has also issued a clarification stating that the advertisement was not issued by them. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the image shared in the post is old and not from Karnataka.
To sum it up, a 2019 photo from Telangana is shared as the recent picture of a hoarding of CMR shopping mall endorsing ‘love jihad’ in Karnataka.
