False posts link unrelated footage of police raid to local opposition party in India

This article is more than one year old.
Published on October 14, 2022 at 10:26
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

A video that appears to show huge wads of cash being confiscated has been viewed thousands of times in Twitter and Facebook posts that claim it was filmed when authorities raided the house of a local opposition party leader in Gujarat in western India. This is false: Gujarat police told AFP no such raid has been recently carried out. The video actually shows a raid at the house of a businessman charged with mobile gaming fraud in Kolkata, local police separately told AFP.

The video has been viewed over 2,500 times since it was shared here on Twitter on October 5.

The video's caption sarcastically states the Directorate of Enforcement (ED) -- an Indian government body that investigates financial crimes -- raided the house of "Aam Aadmi Party leader Shekhar Agarwal".

Keyword searches did not find an AAP party leader with the said name.

The Hindi-language caption translates as: "In Gujarat's Surat, there has been a raid by ED at the house of an honest leader of the country's most honest party Aam Aadmi Party -- Shekhar Agarwal.

"Seeing this amount, you will get an assessment of their honesty and their preparation for elections."

The 36-second video shows several people counting notes with machines while a large amount of cash can be seen in a room.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on October 10, 2022

The video surfaced ahead of state assembly elections in Gujarat in December.

The local opposition AAP led by Arvind Kejriwal is vying to knock out Bhupendrabhai Patel from the country's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party to become state chief minister.

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

Some users appeared to believe the claim and accused the AAP of using the money to bribe voters.

"And these people say that we have come to change politics and end corruption," one user commented.

"All this money was deposited for buying votes, after all this party also became corrupt," another said.

The claim, however, is false.

A spokesman for the local police in Gujarat told AFP that authorities have not conducted a raid on the house of any AAP leader recently.

"This video is being shared with a false claim," the spokesman said.

Gaming app scam

A reverse image search of the video's keyframes, followed by keyword searches on Google, found the video uploaded on the verified YouTube channel of CNN-News 18 on September 11.

The video's description says it shows an ED raid in Kolkata.

Responding to the posts, a representative for the Kolkata police told AFP the video shows an ED raid on the house of a Kolkata businessman on September 10.

The representative said the businessman was charged with mobile gaming fraud.

The ED also released a statement about the raid on Twitter on October 3.

The agency said: "ED has carried out a search operation & freezed [sic] account balance of ₹5.59 Cr (US$ 680,000) of Aamir Khan & his accomplices under PMLA, in respect to an investigation being conducted relating to the Mobile Gaming App, namely E-nuggets.

"So far, an amount of ₹36.96 Cr (US$ 4 million) has been freezed [sic] in this case."

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in one of the false posts (left) and the video in the CNN-News 18 report (right):

AFP has previously debunked false claims related to the AAP and the upcoming Gujarat elections here, here and here.

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