Old Images Shared As 'Proof' Of BJP's Role In College Street Violence

Two old photographs showing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers rioting are being shared online falsely as 'proof' of the party's involvement in the violence that erupted during Amit Shah’s road show in Kolkata on May 14, 2019.

The images, which have been shared more than 1400 times at the time of writing the article, have been captioned as, “these are BJP’s innocent karyakartas. They are conducting a peaceful road-show according to the instructions of their ‘honest and clean’ leader Amit Shah.”

(“ये हैं भाजपा के सीधे साधे भोले भाले कार्यकरता जो एक स्वच्छ छवि वाले नेता "अमित शाह" के इशारे पर शान्ति पूर्ण तरीके से बंगाल में रोड़ शो कर रहे हैं !”)

The post can be viewed below, and its archived version here.

Fact Check

While the clashes between the Bharatiya Janata Party and Trinamool Congress workers broke out in the evening in College Street, when Shah's convoy was passing through the area, BOOM observed that the images were taken in broad daylight. This was a first giveaway.

We then ran a reverse image search on both the images and found that both were old and unrelated.

The first image, where two men can be seen destroying the windshield of a truck is originally from Jamshedpur. The image is seven years old and part of countrywide protests which broke out because of rising petrol prices. The image was shot by news agency PTI.

The second image, has placards and posters of politicians who are not from Bengal. The text written on the image states, “Setu Gomati Tat,” along with the photo of Dinesh Sharma, the deputy Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

BOOM then ran a keyword search with violence in Uttar Pradesh and was redirected to news reports that documented protests by BJP workers because of rising prices in 2010.