Video of Ram Navami celebrations held in Srinagar is shared as that from Pakistan - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
April 6, 2023
A video of a Hindu procession is being shared on social media with the claim that it belongs to Ram Navami festival celebrations that took place in Pakistan. The post’s description in Hindi translates to ‘Ram Navami is safe in Pakistan, but it’s unsafe in India, why?…‘ Let’s fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals of ‘safe‘ Ram Navami celebrations in Pakistan.
Fact: The video shows a ‘Shobha Yatra’ procession taken out by Kashmiri Pandits in Srinagar on the occasion of this year’s Sri Rama Navami. Hence the claim made in the post is False.
To check the claim’s veracity, we performed a keyword search on Google which did not lead us to any credible media reports that contained the visuals in the viral post. We then ran the video through the InVid tool and performed a reverse image search on a few keyframes obtained in the process. When run through the Google lens, the Urdu text on one of the keyframes was revealed to be ‘Kashmiri Pandits in Srinagar.’
We also observed a logo of the VOA: Voice Of America News on the top right corner of the video, with Urdu text under it. Taking these as hints, we performed a keyword search on Google, which led us to a tweet by VOA Urdu which contained footage similar to the viral video.
بھارت کے زیرِ انتظام کشمیر میں جمعرات کو کشمیری پنڈتوں نے سخت سیکیورٹی انتظامات کے دوران ایک جلوس نکالا جو سرینگر کے مختلف مقامات سے گزرتا ہوا اپنی منزل پر پہنچا۔ کشمیری پنڈت ہر سال اپنے ایک مذہبی تہوار کے موقع پر 'شوبھا یاترا' نامی یہ جلوس نکالتے ہیں۔ زبیر ڈار کی رپورٹ#VOAUrdu pic.twitter.com/se6ys4eDLS
According to the tweet, the video show Kashmiri Pandits taking out a ‘Shobha Yatra’ on 30 March 2023 in Srinagar. ANI published a video report on this ‘Shobha Yatra’, which was held to celebrate the Ram Navami festival.
‘The Jammu and Kashmir Police and CRPF provided tight security cover for the Shobha Yatra which started from Zaindar Mohalla in the old city of Srinagar and passed through the city’s commercial hub Lal Chowk….,’ Zee News reported. A few other media houses also reported this event which you may check here and here.
To sum up, visuals of Ram Navami celebrations held in Srinagar, India, is shared as celebrations of Ram Navami in Pakistan.