A picture from an anti-Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) protest held in Trivandrum, Kerala in February this year is viral with a fake claim linking it to the ongoing farmers' protest.
BOOM found that the viral picture is not connected with the ongoing protests. We traced the picture to April this year and also confirmed with the Welfare Party of India, who had organised the anti-CAA protest in February, that the picture was from the protest site in Trivandrum, Kerala.
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Farmers, mainly from Punjab and Haryana, have been camping at the border of Delhi since November 26 protesting against the three Farm bills passed by the Parliament earlier this year. On December 10, marking the Human Rights Day, protesting farmers at Tikri border displayed placards demanding the release of writers, activists and rationalists arrested mainly in connection with Elgar Parishad and Delhi riots case. The same day also saw farmers holding up posters demanding the release of Sharjeel Imam.
None of the photos from the said day match the viral image.
The viral image shows a banner reading 'Free Sharjeel Imam' erected at a protest site. A Hindi caption with the post translates to 'Farmers are demanding the release of Sharjeel Imam. Tomorrow if they demand Bharat Ratna for Afzal Guru, don't be surprised'.
(Hindi: "किसान" सरज़ील इमाम की रिहाई की मांग कर रहें हैं..कल ये अफ़ज़ल गुरु को भारत रत्न देने की मांग करें तो आश्चर्य नहीं होगा.)
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The same image is viral with similar false claims on Twitter too.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the viral picture and found a tweet from April 15, 2020 with the same photo.
We then found another image from the same day and noticed Welfare Party of India (WPI) written on the top right corner of the banner.Our search confirmed that the party flag looks similar to the flag seen behind the banner in the viral image. We also noticed Malayalam text in the viral image which mentions that 'MLA's fund was used for this construction'. We could not make out the name of the MLA mentioned.
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We then contacted Sajeed Khalid, WPI Kerala State Secretary who confirmed that the image is from an anti-CAA protest 'Occupy Raj Bhavan' conducted by the party in Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) on February 25 and 26 this year. "It was a 30-hour blockade in front of Kerala Raj Bhavan," Khalid told BOOM.
The same was confirmed to us by WPI spokesperson Shamseer who said that the photo is from a protest program against CAA organised by the party.
However, BOOM could not trace the picture to February as claimed by the WPI leaders. We contacted the Twitter user who had posted the picture on April 15 to get more details on the image. The report will be updated once we receive a response.
Protesting farmers had displayed the posters of Sudha Bharadwaj, Umar Khalid, Sharjeel Imam among others on December 10.