Video from 2019 Anti-CAA protests goes viral with a communal spin

Recently, multiple posts have been shared on social media claiming that people of the Muslim community vandalized the Mahishasur railway station in Naopara, Murshidabad District of West Bengal. The post has a video of 1 minute 46 seconds where a group of youths can be seen vandalizing a railway station. The captions claim that people of the Muslim community are destroying the the train station due to the loud noise that trains make disturbing them during Namaaz. 

The caption of the post reads, “Mahishashur raillway station in murshidabad w.bengal being destroyed saying that sound of train whistle is disturbing their namaz.”

Here are some such posts:

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The same video with the same claim has been sent multiple times for verification on our 24×7 WhatsApp Factline number 904 905 3770 over the last couple of days. Archived Link

On verification, we found that this claim is false and misleading. The video is actually from the 2019 anti-CAA protests and is now gong viral with a Fake communal claim. 

Here’s how we verified the information:

Fact Check Methodology

To verify this claim, we first split the video into several key-frames via the invid-we verify tool and ran a reverse image search. No relevant information was found.

 Following this, we carefully observed the video, frame-by-frame and saw that the name of the station reads “Naopara Mahisashur”. Then we searched with relevant keywords and saw some videos shared in 2019 which look exactly like the viral video.

In the video, the name of the station “Naopara Mahishasur” is written in Bengali, Hindi and English. We see the same in the viral video. Below is a comparative picture of the two.

After a search with relevant keywords, we came to know that after the introduction of the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Bill, protests started in different parts of Murshidabad district. According to a report in the newspaper Vartaman, the intensity of the Citizenship Amendment Act was highest in Jangipur. The protesters first started gathering at Nimtita station, Poradanga station and Naopara Mahishasur station and then they started vandalizing. 

Our colleagues at Fact Crescendo Bangla, contacted the OC of Jiaganj Police Station to get clarification on the matter. He told us, “The area does not come under our police station but I can say that no such incident has taken place at any station in Murshidabad recently.”

Naopara Mahishasur falls under Sagardighi police station and Sagardighi is part of Jangipur subdivision. We contacted SDP Bidyut Tarafdar of Jangipur District Police and he said, “There has been no incident of violence or terror at Naopara Mahishasur railway station recently. This is fake news.”

The same claim was also fact checked by Fact Crescendo Bangla. Here is the link to it:

Given the above information and evidence, it is clear that this video is not recent. The video of the protest against the 2019 Citizenship Amendment Act is being shared with false claims with religious overtones. 

Conclusion 

After verifying the information, Fact Crescendo has come to the conclusion that the above claim is wrong and baseless. A video from the 2019 anti-CAA protests is being shared with a Fake communal claim.