BJP Worker Shares Old Image To Falsely Claim Karauli Riot Victim Was A Rioter

A Bharatiya Janata Party karyakarta of the Gujarat unit recently shared a collage of two images - one showing a victim of the recent communal riots in Rajasthan's Karauli, and another showing a skullcap-donning man pelting stones - with the claim that they are the same person, and that he was engaging in violence during the riots.

BOOM found this claim to be false; the image of the skullcap-wearing stone pelter has existed on the internet since 2016, and is not linked to the recent communal riots in Karauli.

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BJP Gujarat worker Dinesh Desai shared the two images on Twitter, with the caption "सच्चाई", which translates to 'truth' in English. The image of the victim of Karauli riots had the text "On Camera" written on top, while the image of the skullcap-wearing stone pelter had the word "Off Camera" written on top.

Click here to view an archive of Desai's tweet.

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Fact-Check

BOOM looked through the recent images from the Karauli riots, and found that the first image - showing a skullcap-wearing old man in tears - was actually taken by photo journalist Meer Faisal.

We spoke to Faisal, who confirmed to us that he had indeed taken the photo in Karauli on April 11, 2022. He further confirmed to us that the name of the man is Nazmuddin.

A ground report on Karauli, by freelance reporter Samriddhi Sukania, also included an image of the same man. Her report confirmed that the man is 75-year-old Nazmuddin, who ran a shop of dry fruits and spices. The report mentioned that the shop was now completely burnt in the riots.

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We then did a reverse image search of the second image - showing a skullcap-wearing man pelting stones. We were led to a tweet from January 8, 2016.

Click here to view an archive of the above it.

According to user @jitsamar14, the image is from the Kaliachak riots that happened in West Bengal's Malda district on January 3, 2016.

While we could not independently ascertain the origins of the photo, the fact that it has existed since January 2016 suggests that it cannot be linked to the recent riots in Karauli.