Photos From Anti-CAA Protests Falsely Linked To Farmers' Delhi Chalo March
BOOM found two unrelated images were linked to claim that Sikh protesters who participated in anti-CAA protests were back in the farmers' agitation.
Two images of farmer union leaders participating in anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protests held earlier this year in Punjab and Delhi, are being shared claiming the same leaders were seen protesting at the ongoing Delhi Chalo march.
The collage features an image of Bharti Kisan Union (BKU) members at the Shaheen Bagh protests in Delhi and an old image of leaders from farmers' union supporting Muslim protesters at an anti-CAA agitation in Ludhiana. Faces of the Sikh members of BKU seen in both the photographs have been circled to support the narrative that the same people appear in both.
BOOM identified the leader in one of the pictures as Manjit Singh Dhaner, who said that the photo claiming to be from Shaheen Bagh protests is from Ludhiana, Punjab.
Both the images have been captioned as the protest site of Shaheen Bagh and farmers' protest in Delhi, respectively. BOOM had debunked the image, erroneously captioned as Kisan Andholan (farmers' protest) when it was viral with the narrative that misidentified one of the woman as Rajkumari Bansal, who was given the infamous moniker Hathras Bhabhi by the right wing troll.
Below is a Facebook post with the same narrative. Click here for an archive.
The image is also viral on Twitter with the same claim. Here is an archive of the same.
BOOM also received the image on its helpline number for verification.
Fact Check
Image 1
BOOM scanned the official Facebook page of BKU-Bharti Kisan Union Ekta Ugrahan / ਭਾਰਤੀ ਕਿਸਾਂਨ ਯੁਨੀਅਨ ਏਕਤਾ ਉਗਰਾਹਾਂ and found the same photograph of BKU leaders posing with anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protesters in Ludhiana, which was uploaded on March 3 on their page.
The caption of the image announced a postponement of an anti-CAA rally in Ludhiana because of heavy rains in March.
We then reached out to the social media team of BKU who identified the location as the Ludhiana chapter of anti-CAA protests and the Sikh leaders associated with the same.
The BKU leaders photographed in the image are (from left to right) Jhanda Singh Jethuke, senior vice president of BKU (Ekta Ugrahan), Manjit Singh Dhaner, BKU (Ekta Dakaunda) and Saudagar Singh Thadani.
Speaking to BOOM, Manjit Singh Dhaner said, "This image was taken during the anti-CAA protests in Malerkotla, Ludhiana. The area is known as Ludhiana's Shaheen Bagh." According to reports, Malerkotla was the epicenter of the anti-CAA rallies in Punjab with over several participating to show solidarity.
Thus the location of the image was erroneously captioned as Shaheen Bagh, Delhi's famous anti-CAA protest site.
Dhaner also clarified that the three men in the second viral image are not them. "They are BKU members, but not us," he added.
Image 2
The image is originally from Shaheen Bagh. It was uploaded on the BKU Bharti Kisan Union Ekta Ugrahan page in February this year. BOOM was independently able to verify the location of the image as well. We reached out to Harinder Kaur Bindu, the Mahila Morcha president of BKU, who confirmed that the image is from Shaheen Bagh and taken during the anti-CAA protests when BKU members took turns to cook langar for the protesters.
"The BKU members would visit Shaheen Bagh often during January and February this year to cook langar for the protesters. This is from one such visit. The elderly people are holding our flag," Bindu said. While Bindu was not able to identify the woman who was earlier misidentified as Bansal or the Sikh men in the image, she confirmed that it is not from the ongoing farmers protest.
Read BOOM's detailed fact-check here.
BOOM could not independently verify the identity of the men circled in the image.
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