A viral social media post (here, here, and here) features a video of a man sitting inside a car, seemingly mocking a cow, along with a photo of a man sitting on the floor with a police officer standing behind him. It also includes visuals of the man being dragged by the police while saying, “Cow is our mother.” The post claims that a Muslim man was arrested for mocking a cow and was later seen saying, “Cow is our mother,” after being punished by the Uttar Pradesh police. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: Police punished a Mulsim man for mocking a cow in Uttar Pradesh.
Fact: The viral post combines three different incidents. The photo of a man with a police officer standing behind him is from July 2023, linked to a case involving flesh being thrown near a Hanuman Temple in Haryana. The video of a man being dragged by police while saying, “Cow is our mother,” is from October 2022, involving the arrest of Irshad alias Sonu for cow smuggling in Uttar Pradesh. However, we couldn’t identify the man mocking the cow as his social media handle was deleted, and we found no reports of his arrest. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
In an Instagram post (archived), comments claimed that the young man in the video was not Muslim but Hindu. They further stated that he deleted the video and apologised for mocking a cow, with a user mentioning his name as Nakul.
We came across another Instagram post (archived) dated 19 September 2024, where the caption urged users to share the video and call for police action. The post featured a screenshot of an Instagram account that had originally shared the cow-mocking video. The account, identified as belonging to a man named Nakul with the username “@n___nakul_,” has since been deleted.
We found no news reports confirming the arrest of this man for mocking a cow. Additionally, we could not independently verify whether the man in the viral video is Muslim, as the social media account had been deleted, and we were unable to contact him.
To verify the claim of a man sitting on the floor with a police officer standing behind him, we conducted a Google Lens image search, which led us to reports (here and here) (archived here and here) featuring the same viral photo dated 01 July 2023. According to the reports, the police filed a case against nine people for throwing pieces of flesh near a Hanuman Temple on the Gurugram-Faridabad road. The reports included a photo of two rag pickers, Obirul and Nadeem, who were arrested in connection with the case. The photo in the viral video showing a man and a cop is a cropped version of this original photo.
To verify the claim of a man being dragged by police while saying, “Cow is our mother,” we did a reverse image search, which led us to reports (here and here) (archived here and here) featuring the same viral video dated 28 October 2022. According to the reports, Irshad alias Sonu was arrested by the Ghaziabad police for cow smuggling and shot at when he tried to flee. He was filmed chanting “Cow is our mother” after being shot.
To sum up, photos and videos of old cases from 2022 and 2023 are falsely linked to a video of a man mocking a cow.
