This photo has circulated in reports about an interfaith Indian couple who married in 2016
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on September 2, 2020 at 09:25
- 2 min read
- By AFP India
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The photo was shared on Facebook here on August 29, 2020. The post has been shared more than 3,200 times.
The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “Sister of Kapil Mishra, who led the Hindu-Muslim riots in Delhi, gets married to Shahzad Ali. Congratulations to Kapil Mishra and bhakts for their new brother-in-law.”
Kapil Mishra is a vocal Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) politician in the Indian capital of Delhi, which witnessed widespread communal violence earlier this year. He was elected in 2015 to Delhi’s Legislative Assembly from the Aam Aadmi Party, but joined the BJP in 2019 after being disqualified as a lawmaker and expelled from the AAP.
"Bhakts" refers to committed followers of India’s BJP Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
The photo was also shared alongside an identical claim on Facebook here, here, here and here; and on Twitter here, here, here and here.
The claim, however, is misleading.
A reverse image search on Google found the photo was published on April 18, 2016 here in a news report about an interfaith wedding.
“Love triumphs as Ashita-Shakeel Ahmad wedding unites Hindu-Muslim famlies,” reads the headline.
The photo was also published in by The Hindu, a major Indian newspaper, here on the same day.
According to the reports, Ashitha Babu, a Hindu woman, married Shakeel Ahmed, a Muslim man, at a ceremony that was under tight security after a Hindu group publicly opposed the union.
The interfaith wedding was also reported by several other Indian media outlets; for example here on April 18, 2016 by NDTV Hindi and here by The Indian Express on April 24, 2016.
NDTV also published this video report about the wedding on April 17, 2020, in which the bride’s father, Dr Narendra Babu, can be heard voicing his support for the marriage.
Kapil Mishra’s father is not named Dr Narendra Babu on his official Delhi Assembly member profile. Hi father's name is given as R P Mishra, i.e. Rameshwar Prasad Mishra.
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