Old Video of Liquor Smugglers Caught in AP Shared as BJP Workers in Burqa Caught by Karnataka Police

A video showing a team of police officers nabbing a man disguised in a burqa is being widely shared on social media. It is being claimed that the police caught a BJP worker, disguised in a burqa, throwing stones at police in Karnataka. A tweet with a caption that reads, “Many people in Hijab threw stones at policemen in Karnataka. The Karnataka police caught them & found them to be  BJP men in Hijab. Exposed them to the media.. How low filth called BJP can stoop to!” is also circulating. 

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However, when we did a fact-check on this video, we found that the video is old and is not related to Karnataka or BJP. Here is the fact-check.

Fact Check

This video is old and has been shared with a false narrative a few years ago as well. We had debunked this video when it was shared with a similar false narrative back in 2020. You can read our fact checks in different languages by clicking on the links provided below.

Hindi | बुर्काधारी शराब तस्कर की गिरफ़्तारी को पाकिस्तानी ध्वज फहराने पर आर.एस.एस कार्यकर्ता की गिरफ़्तारी का बता फैलाया जा रहा है।

Malayalam | പര്‍ദ്ദ ധരിച്ച് സ്പിരിറ്റ്‌ കടത്തുമ്പോള്‍ ആന്ധ്രാപ്രദേശില്‍ പിടിയിലായ പ്രതിയുടെ വീഡിയോ ആര്‍.എസ്.എസ്. പ്രവര്‍ത്തകന്‍ എന്ന തരത്തില്‍ പ്രചരിപ്പിക്കുന്നു…

We did a keyword search on Google with relevant keywords and found many news articles related to this incident. As per a report by TOI, the incident took place in Kurnool in Andhra Pradesh. AP Police arrested five men trying to smuggle alcohol in disguise.

We contacted the then Kurnool City SP, Mr Fakirappa Kaginelli. When asked about the video, he said, “The people you are seeing in the video are liquor smugglers. We had captured two smugglers near the Andhra-Telangana border and recovered 72 illicit liquor bottles from them. One of the smugglers had disguised himself in a burqa to deceive the Police. You are seeing him in the video. The video has no relation with RSS or BJP.”

Following this, Dr. Fakirappa took to Twitter to debunk this false narrative. You can see his tweet below:

We had also spoken to the chief inspector of Kurnool Excise department, Laxmi Durgai, who said, “The narrative that a BJP/RSS worker was caught in Burqa is completely false. The man seen in the video was traveling from Telangana to Andhra on a motorbike when they were caught. We seized 78 bottles of illicit liquor from them. We had arrested a total of 7 people in this matter.”

You can watch a report on this incident published by ETV news in 2020 below.

Conclusion

The video shared as BJP workers disguised in a burqa throwing stones at the police in Karnataka is actually a two-year-old video from Andhra Pradesh. The video shows a liquor smuggler caught by Kurnool Police and Excise Department disguised in a burqa. The video has no relation to Karnataka or BJP.