Did a Pakistani man named Farid Khan wore the Indian Flag dress and during India Vs Pakistan match, urinated in the oval gallery and also got arrested? Fact Check!

A Facebook user named ‘Chakrapani Sharma’‎ shared a post on 23 June 2019. The post as translated from Hindi quoted “Pakistan’s extremely abominable move to defame India and Indians! The question is also for the peace messengers in this region that why are they expecting a brotherhood with such low lives.” 

As per this post’s claim, this man’s name is Farid Khan from Pakistan. Allegedly, he is impersonating an Indian cricket fan by wearing the Indian Flag dress. He has also recorded and uploaded a video of him urinating during the India Vs Australia match and uploaded it. When the post went viral, the London police arrested him and his two brothers. Let us see what the facts are!  

NARRATIVE ON SOCIAL MEDIA:

FacebookPost | ArchivedLink

FACT CHECK:

We first searched the picture shared in the above photo using Yandex Image Search. You can see the results below.

In this search, we received a news report dated 5 April 2016 on NewsPakistan, which has a similar picture from the above post. According to this news, the British police arrested five people suspected of terrorism. They were arrested based on suspected involvement in terrorist attacks on the Paris and Brussels airports. However, the claim made in the above post is not mentioned anywhere in this news. To read the full report, click on the link below.

NewsPakistanPost | ArchivedLink

This information affirms this fact that this picture has been used to mislead readers, which is not related to the claimed event.

Then we searched the claim given in the above post on Google using the key words ‘man dressed in Indian Flag urinating in the oval gallery’. You can see the results below.

We found a news dated 18 June 2019 by Newstracklive, has a picture similar to the above mentioned post and states that it is an Indian citizen and not a Pakistani.

Click the link below to read the full story.

NewstracklivePost | ArchivedLink

After this, we searched using the key words ‘man urinating during a cricket match’ on youtube.

We found a video uploaded by a youtube user named Mahendra Dhabi, which showed the man shown in the above post.

When we went to Mahendra Dhabi’s YouTube page, we found that this user has uploaded only two videos, and both of them are about the same person.

In this video, this person appears to urinate during a match, while in another video this person is drinking alcohol. Both videos are uploaded on 29 August 2018, i.e. last year. The second video has been recorded from a TV or computer screen, which shows the banner of Rohit and Raina playing in the lower part of the video, as well as the icon of Ireland (green clover leaf) on the right side. This confirms that this cricket match is not India vs Australia but India vs Ireland.

After this, we found the picture of this person using Yandex image search. We found a video of YouTube, which was uploaded by R Times News Channel dated 16 June 2017. In this video, between 02:35 to 02:45 this person can be seen on in the interview – speaking in front of the camera, but the clothes he wore is different from the clothes shown in the above post. This news says that this video is about the interview taken after the ICC Champions Trophy-semi-finals between India and Bangladesh. This match took place in Birmingham, which is in England.

On seeing the difference of one year in both videos, we searched for the cricket matches held between 16 June 2017 to 29 August 2018, in which India and Ireland were playing. To find this news, we searched on Google using key words ‘cricket match schedule india vs ireland 2017 and 2018’ and got information about T20I game of India Vs Ireland on 27 June 2018 and 29 June 2018 on a website called cricbuzz, Which was held in The Village, Dublin, Ireland. This match is from the series when India’s team went to Ireland tour.

CricbuzzPost | ArchivedLink

This information affirms that this video is from the match played on 27 June 2018 of T20I series, India Vs Ireland, which was held in The Village, Dublin, Ireland.

Then we tried to find the news of the arrest of a person at the cricket stadium on Google from different words, but we did not get any such news.

After this, we searched the person’s picture shown in the above claim using Yandex image search. You can see the results below.

In the description of a link of Twitter, we saw a link to Facebook page, showing the name ‘Narendra Bhojani’. When we searched this name on Facebook, we found a Facebook page and a Facebook user.

When we went to Narendra Bhojani’s Facebook page, we saw that this person is from Nairobi in Kenya, but lives in Bolton, England.

FacebookPage | ArchivedLink

Then when we went to the page called ‘Bhojani’s Cricket MAD’, found from the search, we saw the picture similar to the post photo shown in the claim, shared on 28 June 2018. According to our research, the first T20I series match – India Vs Ireland was on 27 June 2018 

The person shown in the claim and the person found in the search is same.

With this information, we come to the conclusion that the pictures shown in the above posts are being shared with the wrong description. The name of the person is Narendra Bhojani and he is an Indian, but a resident of Bolton, England. The claim made in the above post is that it is a match of India vs Australia, it is also wrong because it is proved by our research that it is a match of the T20I series played between India and Ireland, organized in ‘The Village’ in Dublin, Ireland. Nor has Narendra Bhojani been arrested by the London police.

IN CONCLUSION:

Fact Crescendo has fact checked and confirms that the photograph is being share in the post with a wrong narrative. We categorise the story as FALSE. 

FactCrescendo advises its readers to refrain from sharing such misleading and communally biased photographs and do a self-check on the true narrative of such incidents before believing them.