2019 Clip of Dubai Police Playing Indian National Anthem Falsely Linked to I-Day

The Dubai Police Band played the Indian national anthem during the Diwali celebrations in 2019.

The 2019 video of Diwali celebrations is being shared as Dubai Police celebrating India's independence day.

(Photo: WhatsApp/Altered by The Quint)

A video of a band dressed in white thobes playing the Indian national anthem on a stage is being shared on social media, with users expressing pride that the Dubai Police's band played it on the occasion of India's 75th Independence Day.

The clip, however, is old. While it does show the Dubai Police band playing the Indian national anthem, it is from a Diwali celebration in the city's Hathi's Garden in 2019, which was jointly organised by Dubai Tourism and the Indian Consulate in Dubai.

CLAIM

The claim along with the video reads: "Dubai Police playing Indian National anthem on Indian Independence Day. (sic)"

An archived version of this post can be accessed here.

(Photo: Twitter/ Screenshot)

More such posts on Facebook can be seen here, here, and here.

The Quint received a query regarding the claim being made on its WhatsApp tipline as well.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using InVID, a video verification tool, we divided the video into multiple keyframes and ran reverse image search on them. The search led us to a news report published by India Today on 25 October 2019.

India Today's report from 2019 carried videos from the event.

(Photo: India Today/ Screenshot)

The article stated that the Dubai Police band played the Indian national anthem during Diwali celebrations and that the city-wide celebrations of the festival included fireworks and Bollywood dance performances.

Further, we came across a report published in 2019 by UAE's Khaleej Times, which reported that the Dubai Police band 'delighted thousands of visitors at Dubai Festival City Mall' as they played the Indian national anthem on the occasion of Diwali, which was celebrated at an event titled 'Make your Diwali Brighter than Ever.'

Additionally, we found a video of the celebrations uploaded on Twitter by DD News on 24 October 2019. The post's caption noted that the programme was jointly organised by Dubai Tourism and the Indian Consulate in Dubai.

Clearly, an old video of Dubai Police band playing the Indian national anthem on the occasion of Diwali was falsely linked to India's 75th Independence Day.

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