2018 Images From Protest In Lucknow Revived With Unemployment Twist

A set of old images purportedly showing police brutality against protesters is viral with false claims linking the pictures to the recent protests against unemployment in Uttar Pradesh.

BOOM found that the images are from 2018 when the Uttar Pradesh police had caned teacher training aspirants protesting in Lucknow on November 2.

The photos have been revived at a time when protests over growing unemployment had been organised in several parts of the country recently. Netizens had trended National Unemployment Day on Twitter last week coinciding with Prime Minister Narendra Modi's birthday.

Students, and youths belonging to opposition parties had organised several such protest rallies all over Uttar Pradesh demanding jobs. Read more about it here.

The viral post shares a collage of images with a caption in Hindi which translates to 'You voted for religion and temple, if you ask for jobs now you'll get (beaten with) sticks #Regret".

(Hindi: तुमने वोट धर्म और मंदिर के लिए दिया था अब नौकरी मांगोगे तो डंडे ही मिलेंगे #अफ़सोस )

Click here to view an archive of the post.

Similar set of images were viral on Twitter with same caption posted by multiple users.

For archives of the tweets, click here, here, here and here.

Fact Check

BOOM did a reverse image search on some of the viral photos and found news articles and tweets from 2018 that carried the same set of images with more details on the incident.

According to reports, the protest was led by applicants for the post of assistant teachers in primary schools of UP on November 2, 2018.

Reports further mention that the protests started after the Allahabad High Court directed the Central Bureau of Investigation to conduct an enquiry into the selection process to fill the 68,500 posts of teachers as advertised by the Yogi Adityanath administration earlier that year.

Samajwadi party spokesperson Richa Singh and Congress leader Rahul Gandhi had also tweeted the viral images and criticised the UP government for the police brutality.

BOOM also found the same set of pictures tweeted by journalist Prashant Kumar on the same day i.e. November 2, 2018.

While BOOM traced four of the now-viral pictures, we were not able to trace one of the pictures where four men can be seen lying on the ground.