A social media post accompanying a video of police dispersing a crowd is being shared with a claim that the visuals show Uttar Pradesh police’s lathi charge for offering namaz on road. Let’s fact-check the veracity of the video shared in the post.
Claim: Visuals of Uttar Pradesh police lathi charge on crowd for offering namaz on road.
Fact: The visuals are related to an old incident that took place in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, back October 2021. The visuals show police lathi charge on miscreants who pelted stones during a procession on Milad-Un-Nabi in Jabalpur. These visuals have nothing to do with Uttar Pradesh. Further there are no recent reports of police lathi charge for offering namaz on roads in Uttar Pradesh. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
These visuals are not from Uttar Pradesh as claimed in the post, but from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh. Moreover, police were using force against the crowd, not for offering namaz on road but were dispersing the crowd involved in the violence that broke out on Milad-un-Nabi, back in October 2021.
A search on Facebook yielded a local news report, that carried visuals that matched the location of the viral video. This is evident from the comparison of screenshots of this report with that of the viral video.
As per the above-mentioned news report dated 19 October 2021, the visuals are from a fish market area in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh, wherein the mob pelted stones at the police, and in retaliation, the police fired tear gas shells at the mob.
Further, both in the news report and in the viral video, we can spot a shop with the name ‘एस दीन टेलर्स (S Deen Tailors)’. A search on Google maps yielded the same shop located in Jabalpur, thus authenticating the location of the viral video as Jabalpur.
Further search with relevant keywords yielded a couple of Facebooks posts that shared visuals of police lathi charge captured from another angle (here & here). As per these posts, the visuals are related to a police lathi charge that took place when violence broke out during a procession on Milad-Un-Nabi in Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh.
Taking a cue from the above-mentioned Facebook posts, a Google search with relevant keywords yielded a news article that reported visuals similar to the visuals that captured the lathi charge from another angle. As per the article, ‘police used lathi-charge and lobbed teargas shells after some persons threw firecrackers and stones at them while gathering for prayers to mark Milad-un-Nabi’.
Thus, above mentioned pieces of evidence establish the fact that the viral video is from Jabalpur and is related to a police lathi charge following stone-pelting during a procession on Milad-Un-Nabi.
To sum it up, old visuals from Jabalpur, Madhya Pradesh are passed off as Police lathi charge for offering namaz on roads in Uttar Pradesh.
