Did TMC Workers Attack Hindus During BJP's Kolkata Rally?

Multiple photographs depicting violence and participants soaked in blood at a rally have gone viral with a false narrative. Facebook user 'Anil Singh BJP' shared a collage of three graphic photographs where a man and two women in three different pictures can be seen bleeding after a possible protest march.

The post is accompanied with a caption in Hindi, which can be translated to, "Mamata Banerjee made her goons attack our Hindu brothers at the BJP rally in Kolkata. If you want to save the nation, then let BJP win in 2019." The post seeks to draw attention on the present political scenario in West Bengal, which has become a hotbed of clashes between the ruling Trinamool Congress and the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP).

Take a look at the post below and the archived post here.

Warning: The post contains graphic photographs. The post published on February 9 has received 28,000 shares.

Fact Check

The photographs aren’t from a BJP rally held in Kolkata. BJP has not convened a rally in Kolkata in the last several months. Prominent BJP leaders including Amit Shah, Yogi Adityanath, Rajnath Singh and Smriti Irani participated in rallies held across West Bengal but not in Kolkata yet.

Moreover, a reverse image search showed that the first two images are from a protest by young job aspirants in Lucknow outside the Uttar Pradesh Legislative Assembly. The protests were held in November 2018, where those seeking jobs were injured because of the alleged lathicharge by the police.

Infact, Congress President Rahul Gandhi also tweeted about the event, criticising Yogi Adityanath’s government for cracking down heavily on the students of the state.

The third image of a woman bleeding from her head is originally from a different incident that took place in Kolkata in October 2018. Parents and guardians of students protested against molestation of a child in Binodini Girls’ High School, Dhakuria. The school premises turned into a battle ground when parents barged into the school and beat up the teachers for allegedly being ‘oblivious’ to such atrocities in the school. The photograph is of a woman who hurt herself while protesting.