This is a doctored photo with manipulated placards about India's citizenship law
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on January 1, 2020 at 05:55
- 3 min read
- By AFP India
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The image was published in this Facebook post on December 20, 2019. It has been shared more than 1,100 times.
It shows uniformed officers at a sit-in protest, holding placards.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:
The placards in the image read: “No CAA, No NRC”, “Baton charging the innocents, we won’t be able to do it so”, “We oppose NRC & CAA”.
“NRC” is an acronym for the National Register of Citizens. It is a government record of all Indian citizens, currently only being logged in the state of Assam. The NRC came under scrutiny after the most recent release in August 2019 was found to have omitted some two million people who were deemed unable to prove their Indian citizenship. Critics claimed the move was particularly discriminatory against the state’s Muslim population, as reported by AFP here on September 2, 2019.
“CAA” is an acronym for the Citizenship Amendment Act, a new law passed in India on December 11, 2019. The law, which granted citizenship to non-Muslim immigrants from Afghanistan, Bangladesh, and Pakistan, has sparked violent protests nationwide, as reported by AFP here on December 12, 2019.
The caption in the misleading Facebook post translates in English to: “salutations”.
The same image was also shared here, here and here on Facebook, and here and here on Twitter, with a similar claim.
The claim is false; the image has been doctored to include manipulated placards.
A reverse image search on Google found the original photo published here by Indian English-language news website Scroll.in on November 5, 2019. The photo was credited to India’s Press Trust of India news agency.
Below is a screenshot of the photo published by Scroll.in:
The Hindi-language placards translate in English to: “Who will listen, whom shall we speak to”, “Today is police, tomorrow who?”
The image is captioned: “Police personnel in Delhi Protest”.
The report reads in part: “On Tuesday… thousands of police personnel protest against an assault on his colleagues by lawyers outside the Delhi Police Headquarters on the weekend.
“The tensions had been building since November 2 after a dispute over a wrongly parked vehicle outside Tis Hazari Court Complex in Old Delhi snowballed into a clash that left 10 policemen and several lawyers injured, and 17 vehicles vandalised.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading posts (L) and the photo published by Scroll.in (R):
The same photo was also published in this report by Indian English-language magazine India Today on November 5, 2019.
This report also states the gathering was a “protest against the recent manhandling of some cops by lawyers”.
“November 5 was a rare day when police personnel in uniform took to the streets to protest and demand justice.”
“It was organised to protest against the recent manhandling of some cops by lawyers - first at the Tis Hazari Court Complex on Saturday, and then at the Saket Court Complex on Monday.”
The same protest was also covered in reports by English-language newspaper Economic times here, and English-language newspaper The Hindu here, both on November 5, 2019.
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