An old article published in 2014 is being shared on social media (here, here and here) with the claim that AIMIM party leader Asaduddin Owaisi said “If India goes to war with Pakistan, then 25 crore Indian Muslims will join Pakistan army”. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Asaduddin Owaisi said, “If India goes to war with Pakistan, then 25 crore Indian Muslims will join the Pakistan army.”
Fact: No reputed news magazine or media outlet reported the alleged comments made in the post. Asaduddin refuted these statements attributed to him. In an interview in 2015, he mentioned initiating legal proceedings against the news agency and noted that some organizations had apologized for making such baseless remarks. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
On performing a relevant keyword search regarding the viral claim, we discovered an article from Kashmir Observer in 2014 attributing the statement “If India goes to war with Pakistan, then 25 crore Indian Muslims will join the Pakistan army” to Asaduddin. If Asaduddin had made such comments, they would have been widely covered by leading newspapers and media outlets nationwide. However, no such reports were found.
Further, we found that Asaduddin himself posted a tweet (here, here and here) denying these comments and that he took legal action against the news agency.
Subsequent research led us to Asaduddin’s interview with Headlines Today in 2015. Asaduddin refuted the alleged statements attributed to him. He mentioned initiating legal proceedings against the news agency and that some organizations had apologized for making such baseless remarks. Factly previously debunked this viral post in 2019, and it has resurfaced once more ahead of the 2024 Lok Sabha elections.
To sum up, Asaduddin Owaisi did not say that “If India engages in war with Pakistan, 25 crore Indian Muslims will join the Pakistan army”.
