Old unrelated images shared as farmers disrespecting the national flag in the ongoing protests - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
December 16, 2020
Multiple photos are being shared on social media claiming them as the pictures of anti-India protests organized by the farmers in the country. They can be seen here and here. In these posts, we can see the images of few Sikh men insulting India’s National flag. Amid the ongoing farmers’ protest over the new farm acts, these posts are going viral on social media.  Let’s verify the authenticity of the claims made in the post.
Claim: Farmers disrespecting the national flag in the ongoing protests against the new farm legislation.
Fact: These photos show different protests organized by the Sikh community in the United States. These photos have nothing to do with the ongoing farmer protests against the new farm legislation in the country. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Photo-1:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in this post, we found old posts shared by few users on social media during 2014. They can be seen here, here and here. The same image is also found on ‘Hate India End India’ blog spot. This photo was found posted in ‘Hate India End India’ blog on ‘13 December 2013’. This blog mentions the persons in the photo as Khalistan Youth.
When we searched for more information using these keywords, we found a video posted by ‘Khalsa Foundation USA’ showing the same persons as shown in the photo. This video was uploaded to YouTube on ‘19 August 2013’. The description of the video mentions it to be from Sikh protest against 15 August parade in Fremont, California. From all these pieces of evidence, we can conclude that the photo shared in the post is related to the 2013 Sikhs protest in California.
Photo-2:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar image was found in an album created by the user named Harpreet Dhillon in ‘Flickr’ website. This album titled as “Protest against 15 August India Independence Parade in Fremont, California”. In the website, it is mentioned that this photo was taken on ‘16 August 2009’. So, the image shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the recent farmers’ protest over the new farm bills.
Another image of Sikh protester disrespecting the Indian national flag was falsely linked to the farmers’ protest and was recently debunked by Factly.
To sum it up, old photos of Sikh protest in the US disrespecting the Indian national flag are falsely linked to the ongoing farmers protest over the new farm bills.