2016 images from West Bengal viral as recent ruckus by BJP workers at the Coffee house in Kolkata

Recently BJP supporters swarmed into the first floor of a Coffee House on College Street, Kolkata on March 15, 2021, and tore up posters on the walls of the staircase that said “No Votes to BJP”. Amidst this social media is filled with images and claims related to the incident. The images claim to show the ruckus created by BJP supporters inside a coffee house at College Street. In the viral image one can see BJP workers ransacking furniture in the building.

The caption of the post mentioned that “Ruckus by saffron in iconic coffee house. They are enemies of Bangla and Bengalis. If you vote them they will leave Bengal by destroying it.”

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Fact Check- 

We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on Google for each of the viral images circulating online. The results led us to the images from April 4, 2016, when two groups of BJP workers clashed at a party meet in North Howrah, West Bengal. The clash happened at a local party meeting convened by BJP leader Roopa Ganguly ahead of the first phase of polling before the 2016 West Bengal assembly elections. 

We found a tweet from April 2016 posting the same images on Twitter stating that BJP workers had clashed in Howrah at a party workers’ convention in front of Rupa Ganguly who was the BJP candidate from Howrah North.

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This made us very clear that the images circulating online are not recent ones. Next, we ran a keyword search on Google to find similar news reports on the incident that took place in 2016. We found an article posted by Firstpost in 2016 which had the same photos in it crediting it to photo agency PTI. The caption of the photos read, “BJP workers clash with each other at a party workers’ convention for actress and BJP candidate from Howrah North Assembly constituency Rupa Ganguly in Howrah.”

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We also found another news report on the incident posted on YouTube on 3^rd April 2016 by the verified channel of India TV. The caption of the video said “2 Groups of BJP Workers Clashed in Front of BJP Candidate Roopa Ganguly.” One can see similar visuals on the viral images circulating on social media. The description of the post mentioned “West Bengal Assembly Elections 2016: Two groups of BJP workers clashed in front of BJP candidate Roopa Ganguly.”

Conclusion- Fact Crescendo found the viral post on social media to be Partly False as the incident is true the images circulating online however are from 2016. On 15^th of March BJP workers in Bengal did create a ruckus at the coffee house while the images circulating online are from 2016 when two groups of BJP workers clashed among themselves in front of BJP candidate Roopa Ganguly.