Fact Check: Old Moradabad Covid contact tracing incident passed off as action against Ram Navami stone-pelters
India Today
A viral video shared on social media shows a group of women being escorted into a police vehicle with the claim that they have been arrested for pelting stones at a Ram Navami procession. The India Today Anti-Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the video to be misleading.
A video of a group of women being escorted into a police vehicle has gone viral with the claim that they were arrested for pelting stones at a Ram Navami procession.
Multiple Facebook users have posted this video with a sarcastic Hindi caption that reads, “Farewell to the stone-throwing lioness on Ram navami”.
India Today Anti-Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that this video is not related to the recent Ram Navami communal violence. This 2020 Moradabad video shows medical professionals and cops escorting relatives of those who died from Covid-19 to a quarantine centre.
The viral posts are archived here and here.
With the help of reverse image search, we confirmed that the viral video was uploaded on multiple YouTube channels in 2020. We have found the same viral video was uploaded on a Bengali YouTube Channel on April 16, 2020. It says the incident is from Moradabad.
Another YouTube channel, India Blooms News Service, uploaded a news clip with the same video but a longer version with more details on April 15, 2020.
The YouTube channel wrote in the description, “A team of doctors and medical staffers were attacked in Uttar Pradesh's Moradabad town when they were visiting the area to escort the primary contacts of a COVID-19 positive patient, who died, to a quarantine facility on Wednesday.”
