Unrelated old images are attributed to the recent communal violence in Tripura - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
November 7, 2021
An image is being shared on social media claiming that Muslims who demonstrated against the Tripura communal violence were detained at the ‘Tripura Bhavan’ in Delhi. This post shares a photo of a middle-aged woman weeping with a child. Another photo is being shared on social media claiming it as the visuals of Muslim victims of the recent Tripura violence. Let’s verify the claims made in the post.
Claim: Photos of Muslim victims of the recent communal violence in Tripura, India.
Fact: The first photo shows an old picture of a detained Rohingya woman near the Bangladesh border in India. The other photo is from the recent fire accident that hit the Rohingya camp in Kanchan Kunj, New Delhi. This incident took place in June 2021. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Image 1:
On reverse image search of the photo shared in the post, a similar photo was found in an article published by the ‘Ghana Guardian’ news website in 2019. This article reported it as the visuals of Rohingya refugees arrested near the Bangladesh border in Tripura. The same image was published with a similar description on ‘Tritiyomatra’ and on ‘Alamy’ websites. According to these reports, in January 2019, 31 Rohingyas stranded on the India-Bangladesh border were arrested by the Amtali police in Tripura. This confirms that the image shared in the post is old and not related to the recent communal violence in Tripura.
Image 2:
On reverse image search, a similar photo was found in an Instagram post by an independent journalist named Aasif Mujtaba on 13 June 2021. He described that the photo was shot during the fire accident at the Rohingya camp in Kanchan Kunj, New Delhi. The description of the photo states, “It was 5 in the morning when we returned from the gutted Rohingya settlement at Kanchan Kunj in Delhi. It’s beyond an iota of doubt, a case of systemic violence against the Rohingyas. I talked to many refugees and they all have the same ordeal. Almost every week hindutva fanatics would threaten them of dire consequences if they don’t leave the area”.
On 28 October 2021, Aasif Mujtaba shared the same photo on his Twitter handle and clarified that the image was not related to the recent communal violence in Tripura. Several news websites have reported the fire accident at the Rohingya camp in Kanchan Kunj, New Delhi. They can be seen here and here. This confirms that the photo was shot during a fire accident at Rohingya camp in Delhi, not Tripura.
To sum it up, unrelated old images falsely shared with the context of the recent communal violence in Tripura.