A four-month-old video clip of Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra recorded when they were stopped by police from entering Meerut, Uttar Pradesh is viral with a false claim that the siblings violated a pan-India lockdown to meet their friends.
BOOM found that the video was recorded in December 2019 when the duo had gone to Meerut to meet families of the persons killed in the violence that erupted during protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act. (Read more about it here)
On March 24, 2020 Prime Minister Narendra Modi announced a 21-day pan-India lockdown to halt the spread of the novel coronavirus in India.
The video clip shows Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra in a car conversing with a policeman who stopped them from moving ahead and asks them to return. The policeman can be seen telling them that prohibitory orders and Section 144 are in place, to which Rahul Gandhi responds, "we are not going in groups."
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The caption with the video falsely claims: "This is Rahul Gandhi & Priyanka Gandhi breaking Lock-down Regulations saying they need to visit friends"
The clip is viral on Facebook and Twitter.
Viral on Twitter
Several Twitter handles have started sharing the clip with the same caption.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a keywords search and found that the video of policeman checking the car and denying entry to Rahul Gandhi and Priyanka Gandhi Vadra to Meerut, is old. The duo had gone to Meerut to meet families of people killed in violence amid anti-CAA protests.
According to reports, violence occurred on December 20, 2019, which resulted in the death of five individuals. The visit was reported on December 24, 2019, four days after the killings.
Several media organisations such as the Hindustan Times, NDTV, and Indian Express also covered the incident. The same visuals can be seen in a video report published by Hindustan Times and NDTV below on the same day as the visit.
Moreover, we found a report published by The Indian Express on the incident. "We were suddenly informed that Rahul and Priyanka Gandhi were coming to Meerut to meet the bereaved families of those who died during Friday's violence. We stopped them near Moiddinpur Sugar Mill in Partapur. Keeping in mind their security and the prevailing law and order situation in the town, we have requested them to postpone their plan. They are welcome if they come again on Thursday," the superintendent of police, Meerut, Akhilesh Narain, told The Indian Express.
However, Rahul Gandhi said, "We asked the police to show us the order, but they did not show any order for stopping us and told us to return," Rahul Gandhi told reporters, further reported the newspaper.
Screenshot of the report published by The Indian Express. It consists of the photo corroborating the information regarding the visit.
To read more about the incident, click here and here.
This is not the first time Priyanka Gandhi has been stopped, there have been several times police have denied entry to the two. Read more here.
Since the outbreak of the virus, BOOM has debunked a barrage of misinformation surrounding it. Catch all the updates on our LIVE blog here - Coronavirus LIVE Update