2012 Photo of Namaz Outside Bandra Station Shared to Target Current Maharashtra Government

A decade-old photo of Muslims offering Namaz in front of Bandra Railway Station as police stand guard is going viral as a recent incident. The users sharing the image are taking a dig at Maha CM Uddhav Thackeray accusing him of minority appeasement.

A photo of Muslims offering Namaz is being shared on social media with a claim that Maharashtra CM Uddhav Thackeray is trying to appease the minority community by allowing Namaz outside the Bandra station. The users have also accused Thackeray of double standards for allegedly banning the recital of Hanuman Chalisa.

However, the image is old and has no relation to the ongoing controversy regarding loudspeakers and Hanuman Chalisa in Maharashtra. Let’s understand the actual context of the image.

View Original Tweet – Twitter | Archived Link

In the tweet above, we can see a huge crowd offering Namaz in front of a railway station. Users have been claiming that the image is taken recently under Thackeray’s regime. 

The image is shared in the context of the current controversy over Hanuman Chalisa in Maharashtra. The controversy began after Maharashtra Navnirman Sena (MNS) supremo Raj Thackeray had threatened to recite Hanuman Chalisa in front of mosques if the government or the Muslim community did not remove loudspeakers from the mosques.

The latest in these chains of events is the arrest of an independent Member of Parliament (MP) from Maharashtra’s Amravati and her husband Ravi Rana, who is also an independent Member of Maharastra’s Legislative Assembly from Badnera in Amravati. 

Mumbai Police arrested the couple from their house in Khar after they had announced that they would be reciting Hanuman Chalisa in front of Matoshree, the residence of CM Uddhav Thackeray.  The Bandra Holiday court has remanded them to 14 days of judicial custody. Many Twitter users have shared this image in the current context. Some of the tweets can be viewed here and here. Let’s find out whether the image is recent or not.

Fact Check

On searching for the image on Google via Reverse Image Search, we found that the image is old. One of the results obtained after the search was an article published by The Atlantic in the year 2012.

Read the article here – The Atlantic | Archived Link

The caption of the image is as follows: Indian Muslims offer prayers on the last Friday of Ramadan outside the Bandra railway station in Mumbai, on August 17, 2012. The photo has been credited to Punit Paranjape of AFP. We searched for similar pictures from the same photographer on the stock website, Getty Images. We found different images of the same incident on Getty Images. 

Getty Images

The incident took place on 17th August 2012 in front of Bandra Railway Station as per the description of the photos. Hence, it is clear that the incident has got nothing to do with the current CM Uddhav Thackeray.

Conclusion

The image shared as Maha CM Uddhav Thackeray allowing Muslims to offer Namaz in public places is a decade old. Hence, the narrative shared on social media is false and misleading. The image was taken outside Bandra Railway Station in 2012 when Congress’s Prithviraj Chavan was CM of Maharashtra. The image has nothing to do with the recent controversy in the state over loudspeakers and Hanuman Chalisa.