A video of a young boy offering namaz in the middle of a road is being widely circulated. As the boy offers Namaz, the vehicles passing by are made to stop and when the boy is done with Namaz, the vehicles resume to move. The video is being circulated with a claim that the visuals show an incident that happened in India. Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Visuals of a boy offering namaz in the middle of the road.
Fact: The video was initially shared by a social media user who is based in Dubai. Further, clues like vehicle registration plates, food delivery executives and uniform of security guard suggests that the video is from Dubai. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Earlier in January 2023, a lengthier version of the same video went viral across social media platforms after the late Canadian writer Tarak Fateh shared it on Twitter. Though he claimed the video to be from Pakistan, many Twitter users questioned the authenticity of the location in the comments section.
We found the same video on the Facebook profile of the same user, uploaded on 10 January 2023. Both on TikTok and Facebook profiles, the user mentioned his location as Dubai.
Taking a cue from this, upon careful observation of the lengthier & clearer video shared by Tarak Fateh, we found some clues to conclude that the video is from Dubai. These clues are listed below.
Food delivery Executive:
In the backdrop of the video, we can spot a person dressed like a food delivery executive. A reverse image search of this photo yielded few images of food delivery executives with similar dresses and logos.
As per the description of the image on Alamy, the dress and logo are of ‘Talaat’, a food delivery service based in Dubai.
Talabat is an online food delivery service based in Kuwait and has operations in Kuwait, Jordan, Oman, Qatar, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, the United Arab Emirates, and Iraq.
Security Agency:
Secondly, we observed the uniform of the security guard in the viral video. The backside of the uniform carries Arabic text which loosely translates to ‘guard ‘ in English.
Taking this as a clue, a search on YouTube yielded an interview with a security guard who carried a similar uniform. As per the title of the video, the security guard works for ‘Arkan’ security company in Dubai.
Further search led us to the website of Ejadah, a security company in Dubai. As per the website, Arkan is a security company offering its services in Dubai and Abu Dhabi.
Vehicle registration plates:
Lastly, the registration plates of the vehicles visible in the viral video are similar to those in Dubai. Registration plates in Dubai also carry five digits (here, here & here).
All these confirm that this video is most likely from Dubai and not India, as claimed in the viral post.
To sum it up, this video of a child offering namaz in the middle of the road is from Dubai, not India.
