A video of the Greater Noida police arresting a gang of interstate gang of robbers is being shared with a false claim that it shows the police arresting an accused who brandished a gun at a Durga puja pandal in Azamgarh, Uttar Pradesh.
The video with the false claim went viral after the Azamgarh police on October 14, 2021 arrested a man named Ansar Ahmad for allegedly waving an illegally owned gun at a durga puja pandal in Tarwa block of the district.
BOOM found that the video shows an incident from Greater Noida where the police arrested four members of an interstate robbers gang also nicknamed the 'screw driver gang'.
The false claim on the video which praises UP chief minister Yogi Adityanath for the arrest, is in Hindi and translates to, "UP Police welcoming Adil, who threatened to remove Durga Puja pandal by waving a gun in Azamgarh. This is not Bengal but Uttar Pradesh, where Mamta, not Baba's rule runs."
The video is viral on Facebook with the same false claim. See posts here, here and here
FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is not related to the incident at Azamgarh where the police did arrest a Ansar Ahmad for allegedly brandishing a gun at a Durga puja pandal.
A reverse image search on a keyframe from the video showed results to a tweet by the official Twitter handle of the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissionerate. The tweet from October 17, 2021 shared scenes from the same viral video and the text in Hindi said the four accused were shot in the leg and then arrested by the police during a checking in Beta-2 area. It further said that the four accused were members of an interstate gang which would offer lift to commuters and then beat them up using a screwdrive and steal their belongings.
One of the photos tweeted by the Gautam Buddh Nagar handle also matches the scene in the video which shows an injured accused being arrested and taken away by a team led by an uniformed officer.
One can see the same man who has injuries in his leg in both the photos and the cloth tied to his, the two men holding him up are also same.
We then looked for news reports to check if the arrested accused in the above incident had been identified. According to a report in the Hindustan Times, the accused were identified as "Anand Verma, Shiv Kumar Verma and Deepak Verma and Bablu Verma from Dadri in Greater Noida." None of the accused were named Adil, as being falsely claimed in the viral posts.
The report further quoted the police as saying that "at least 26 cases of robbery, including 12 in Gautam Budh Nagar, are registered against the gang members in different states."
Azamgarh Durga Puja Pandal Incident
A search for incidents related to a Durga puja pandal in Azamgarh showed results for a tweet by the verified handle of the local district police from October 14 about a person arrested for waving an illegal gun at a Durga Puja pandal in Tarwa block area.
Later in a tweet from the same day detailing other work done by the Azamgarh police, they shared a post from their official Facebook page which carried details of the accused where the accused was identified as a Ansar Ahmad alias Adil alias Mantu Khan.
