Video shows Indian teenager in 2020 -- not police 'honouring' Muslim student after hijab ban protests

This article is more than one year old.
Published on February 24, 2022 at 08:58
2 min read
By Mohammad MAZED, AFP Bangladesh

A video has circulated in Facebook posts that claim it shows Indian police displaying the "highest respect" to an Indian Muslim student after she was harassed by a group of Hindu men following a hijab ban in local colleges. The footage -- viewed tens of thousands of times in multiple posts -- circulated online in neighbouring Muslim-majority Bangladesh as the hijab ban in the south Indian state of Karnakata sparked protests. But the video has been shared in a false context: it has circulated online since 2020 in reports about an Indian teenager acting as a district superintendent for International Women's Day in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

The two-minute 39-second clip was shared here on Facebook on February 10, 2022.

Screenshot of the false post. Taken February 14, 2022.

The Bengali-language post translates to English as: "Finally The Indian police were forced to give the highest respect to the sister Muskan [Khan].

"And the verdict of the court has come that from now on the students will be able to go to the educational institution wearing hijab."

Muskan Khan is a Muslim Indian student who was filmed being harassed by a group of Hindu men outside her college in Karnataka in February 2022, after a hijab ban in some of the state's schools sparked protests.

The posts falsely claim the hijab ban was reversed by a court. But as of February 23, 2022, the Karnataka high court was still hearing appeals against the ban, AFP reported.

In an interim order, the court imposed a temporary ban on wearing religious symbols in schools.

The same video clip was shared here and here alongside a similar claim on Facebook.

But the video has been shared in a false context.

AFP found a caption visible in the video states it shows a 14-year old girl in the Indian state of Maharashtra.

A reverse image search with the keyframes found the same video was published on the YouTube channel of Indian news outlet Times of India on March 6, 2020.

The caption reads: “Women's Day: 14-year-old girl becomes DSP 'for a day' in Maharashtra's Buldhana.”

The report identifies the girl as Sahrish Kanwal, a student of Zilla Parishad Urdu High School in Buldhana district.

A keyword search on Google found another Times of India report about the event published on March 5, 2020 which included the same video.

Buldhana Police also posted identical photos of the event on Twitter from their verified Twitter account on March 4, 2020.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video of the misleading post (L) and the video published by the Times of India (R):

Similar photos from the same event have previously been shared alongside misleading claims in India, which AFP has debunked here and here.

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