A 2016 video showing All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen (AIMIM) leader Waris Pathan arguing with a police officer over offering namaz and the use of loudspeakers at a mosque, in Mumbai, is being shared with a false claim that he threatened a cop to let the mosque remain open during the ongoing lockdown.
The clip comes at a time when a nationwide lockdown is in place till May 3,2020 to arrest the spread of the novel Coronavirus in India.
In the 56 seconds video, Pathan can be heard arguing with the cop over the mosque's loudspeaker and asking him not to close the mosque.
The viral video is being shared with the caption, 'Waris pathan - peaceful talks with our policeman.. His own rules for lockdown that he peacefully is explaining our police. The entire Nation follows lockdown while they have special privileges. If they get infected ,should our Doctors treat them?'
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We found that the viral video was being shared on Facebook with the caption in Hindi which when translated reads, 'Mumbai Police threatened, let the mosque run as it is, do not make the speaker's voice lower, let the mosque run like it has been running for 60 years. What is the condition of Maharashtra'.
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The same viral clip was also shared by Arjun Singh, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) Lok Sabha member from Barrackpore, West Bengal as a recent incident.
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FACT-CHECK
On breaking down the video into keyframes and performing a reverse image search using Google Images, we found that the search results showed that the video is from November 2016 and not recent.
We found a longer video posted on YouTube on November 14, 2016, with the description stating that the incident had occurred over the mosque's loudspeaker which led to the altercation between the police and Pathan who was then the Member of the Legislative Assembly (MLA) from Byculla, Mumbai.
In the 2.16 minutes long video, we found that the first 56 seconds from it had been cut from it and shared. In the latter half of the video, one can see Pathan telling the crowd to maintain law and order and then say that the police have not come to trouble them.
According to the website Mumbai Live, Pathan was arguing with the police officer in the video after the police had had asked him to lower the volume of the loudspeaker at the mosque.
BOOM spoke to Pathan who said that the video is old and the matter got resolved at that time.
"This is a 5-6-year-old video which is being shared now, I was called by my constituents in Byculla to solve the issue of the loudspeaker of the mosque that night. I had then intervened and spoken to the police after which the matter was solved immediately and the police also thanked me then," said Pathan.
Pathan also tweeted on the incident tagging Mumbai Police asking for action to be taken against fake news being shared.
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Maharashtra has reported 9318 positive COVID-19 cases and 400 deaths while writing this article. Follow BOOM's LIVE blog for recent updates: Coronavirus LIVE Update: India's Cases Rise To 31,332, Deaths To 1007