These photos have been taken from old reports about unrelated protests in India and Pakistan, not Kashmir
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 17, 2019 at 10:30
- 5 min read
- By Supriya BATRA, AFP India
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The photo collage was published in this Facebook post on June 17, 2016, where it has been shared more than 22,000 times.
Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:
The Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “In Kashmir, a cow is slaughtered on the top of the Indian tricolour. Now the Indian leaders will express their sorrow only. Brothers, if you have had the milk of holy cow mother, then swear on that cow milk, you have to spread this photo everywhere in India to pay the debt of that cow milk. And yes only a fundamentalist Hindu will share this.”
The same photo collage was shared on Facebook here and Twitter here with a similar claim.
The claim is false: all four images in the photo collage have been taken from separate incidents of clashes between activists and policemen in India and Pakistan.
A reverse image search on Google for the top left image in the photo collage found the photo in this report published on the website of People’s Daily, a newspaper in China, on July 13, 2011.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading post highlighted in red (L) and the image on the People’s Daily website (R):
The photo is credited to a stringer for Chinese state media Xinhua, and the caption says it was taken in Agartala, capital of Tripura, a northeast Indian state.
The caption states; “An injured Indian policeman gesturing after he was attacked by activists of India's ruling Congress party in Agartala, on July 11, 2011. One person was killed and 30 others including 11 security personnel were injured in a clash between activists of Congress party and police on Monday in Agartala, according to local news reports. (Xinhua/Stringer)”.
The same incident was reported in this article published by Indian newspaper the Shillong Times on July 12, 2011.
Another reverse image search on Google for the bottom left picture of the photo collage found the same image published here on June 16, 2014 in the photo gallery for Amar Ujala’s website, a Hindi-language newspaper in India.
The caption translates to English as: "Police DIG VS Meena injured badly in stone pelting protest by an angry mob."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading post highlighted in red (L) and original image published on Amar Ujala’s website (R):
This report states the photo was taken in protests in Firozabad in Uttar Pradesh, India in June 2014.
This is another report about the incident by the Press Trust of India news agency, published on the English-language newspaper The Times of India’s website on June 16, 2014.
The report states: "Violent protests broke out on Monday in which several persons, including a DIG of police, were injured following the killing of two police constables by unidentified assailants."
Another reverse image search on Google for the image on the top right in the misleading post found a corresponding image published here on the AFP Forum.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the image in the misleading post (L) with the AFP photo (R):
The caption states in part: “Pakistani activists from the banned charity organisation Jamaat-ud-Dawa (JuD) burn an Indian flag during a protest in Quetta on March 23, 2015.”
However, the slaughtered cow cannot be seen in the AFP picture. AFP photographer Banaras Khan, based in Quetta, told AFP that it had been cropped out of the original edit.
He told AFP by WhatsApp message on July 4, 2019: "Yes a cow was slaughtered during the protest, I clearly remember that. It got cropped out somehow when the photo was finally published."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the photo in the misleading post (L) with the AFP photo (R) with corresponding features circled in red:
The same image was published by Getty Images here on March 23, 2015.
Another Google reverse image search for the fourth picture on the bottom right of the collage found a corresponding photo of the same police officers published here on Indian news site ‘Prahar News Portal’, on June 4, 2015.
The headline states: “Sikh protesters in Jammu.”
The report’s first line states: “Angry Sikh protesters during a clash with police after they removed a poster of Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale at Rani Bagh (sic) near the airport in Jammu on Thursday.”
Below is a screenshot comparison of the fourth image in the misleading post (L) and the photo published by Prahar News Portal (R):
This article published on June 15, 2015, by Hindi-language newspaper Amar Ujala reports on the same incident on June 4, 2015.
It states clashes erupted between cops and a group of about 2,000 Sikh youth in Jammu city in India. It states the demonstrators were protesting against the removal of posters of slain Khalistani leader Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.
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