A 2017 video of police questioning two women wearing burkhas has resurfaced with false claims that the latter are Hindu women who were caught while trying to disrupt anti-Citizenshp Amendment Act (CAA) protests in Lucknow.
The 45 second long clip shows police questioning the two women, who later identify themselves as Pooja and Mansi.
The video is being shared with a Hindi caption that translates to, "One is Pooja and the other is Mansi. And they are accused of wearing a burkha and going to Lucknow's Ghanta Ghar where women are protesting against CAA, NRC and NPR. They are going inside the crowd of women and shouting slogans of Pakistan Zindabad. It is not right to defame Muslims in order to fool the majority."
( Translated from Hindi: "एक का नाम पूजा है और दूसरी का मानसी, और आरोप है कि यह दोनो नक़ाब (बुर्क़ा) पहन कर लखनऊ मे घंटा घर के पास CAA, NRC और NPR के विरुद्ध धरने पर बैठी महिलाओं की भीड़ मे पाकिस्तान ज़िंदाबाद के नारे लगा रही थीं।बहुसंख्यकों को मूर्ख बनाने के लिए मुसलमानो को बदनाम करना ठीक नहीं है।")
The video has been shared by former Congress leader Shakeel Ahmad, with the same narrative. Click here to view the archive of the tweet .
एक का नाम पूजा है और दूसरी का मानसी, और आरोप है कि यह दोनो नक़ाब (बुर्क़ा)पहन कर लखनऊ मे घंटा घर के पास CAA, NRC और NPR के विरुद्ध धरने पर बैठी महिलाओं की भीड़ मे पाकिस्तान ज़िंदाबाद के नारे लगा रही थीं।बहुसंख्यकों को मूर्ख बनाने के लिए मुसलमानो को बदनाम करना ठीक नहीं है। pic.twitter.com/AducMdSInn
— Shakeel Ahmad (@Ahmad_Shakeel) January 29, 2020
The video is viral on Facebook with similar claims.
The protests of Lucknow's Ghanta Ghar are inspired by the anti-CAA protests of Delhi's Shaheen Bagh, where several women are participating in sit-in demonstrations against the citizenship law.
Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into its key frames and ran a reverse image search. We found that the same video was uploaded to YouTube in November, 2017 by Prabhat Khabar. The video was captioned as, "Uttar Pradesh local body election two fake girl reached polling booth in burka police shocked."
According to news reports, the incident occurred in Katra Bazar, Gonda (Uttar Pradesh) in November 2017 when two Hindu women posed as Muslims to cast their votes in a civic poll.
The women were caught by the lady cops when they were standing in the queue wearing a burkha, reported the Prabhatkhabar. During questioning the cops identified them as Hindus - Puja Gupta and Mansi Gupta respectively. However, information in the voter cards did not match with their names. The women had reportedly dressed in a burkha to cast fake votes. Click here to read more about the incident.
The incident was also covered by Hindi daily Patrika.