This photo has circulated in reports about Bangladeshi migrant workers in Malaysia

The photo was published here on Facebook on April 15, 2020.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:

Image

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The post’s Hindi caption translates to English as: “What do the biased media think about these labourers stranded in Gujarat. Whether they are stuck or hiding? They have no money, no food to eat, no money to buy groceries and no place to live. Where will they go after all? Indian media want issues like Jamatis and mosques to hide the real issues and to keep stoking the fire of hate so that people’s attention can be diverted.”

According to Indian media reports, including this article by Indian newspaper The Hindu, an estimated 200,000 migrant workers were stranded in India’s Gujarat after Prime Minister Narendra Modi imposed a three-week nationwide lockdown on March 25, 2020. The lockdown, imposed in a bid to curb the spread of COVID-19, has since been extended to at least May 3, 2020.

“Jamatis” in the caption is a reference to “Tablighi Jamaat”, a Islamic missionary movement that held a religious gathering of thousands in Delhi in March 2020. The congregation was later identified as a major COVID-19 hotspot that killed at least 10 attendees, as stated in this AFP report. 

The photo was also shared here, here, here and here on Facebook and here, here, here and here on Twitter, alongside a similar claim in Hindi.

The same photo was also published here on Facebook and here on Twitter with a similar claim in English. 

The claim is false.

A reverse Google image search found the same photo published here on Facebook on November 29, 2019, some four months before India announced its nationwide lockdown in March 2020.