Burqa Clad ‘Bhakt’ Caught at Shaheen Bagh Protests? It’s Fake News

The image is of a terrorist who opened fire in J&K’s Pulwama in October 2015.

A 2015 image from Kashmir has been circulated on social media with the claim that a burqa-clad man was caught eating biryani at the Shaheen Bagh protest. 

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

Delhi’s Shaheen Bagh has become a hub of anti-CAA protests with women of the area participating in a sit-in protest against the contentious act for over a month now. A massive amount of misinformation has been circulated to discredit the protests. The Quint has debunked several such claims.

CLAIM

In one such claim, an image of a man wearing burqa has been circulated on various social media platforms with the claim that a burqa-clad “bhakt” – a colloquial term used (often in a mocking or derogatory manner) for people endorsing right-wing ideology, was caught eating biryani at the Shaheen Bagh protests.

An archived version of the post can be found here. (Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

At the time of writing the story, the image along with the claim had been shared over 4,900 times and had 1,100 likes. It was shared on Twitter with the same claim.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

TRUE OR FALSE?

The Quint could confirm that the claim with which the image has been circulated is false. The image shows a burqa-clad terrorist who opened fire in Jammu and Kashmir's Pulwama district in October 2015. He was later arrested by the police.

WHAT WE FOUND

First, we conducted a reverse image search which directed us to multiple tweets that suggested the image shows a terrorist who opened fire in Shopian in Jammu & Kashmir.

Taking cues from there we conducted a keyword search using ‘Burqa-clad terrorist opens fire in Shopian’, which led us to several news reports about the aforementioned the incident.

According to a report by The Hindu from October 2015, “Militants, wearing burqa opened fire at police's counter-insurgency group, Special Operations Group, personnel in south Kashmir's Pulwama district. Two civilians were injured in exchange of firing.”

Another report by NDTV suggested that, “the incident happened at the main bus stand of south Kashmir's Pulwama district, over 30 km from capital Srinagar.”

An NDTV article dated 16 October 2015 carried the same viral image.(Source: NDTV/Screenshot)

One of the terrorists, who was wearing a burqa was nabbed was the police.

"The militants opened firing in Pulwama town when they saw a police party, resulting in injuries to some civilians. One of suspected militants who was wearing a burqa has been arrested," Inspector General of Police (Kashmir Zone) SJM Gillani had then told news agency PTI.

Clearly, the incident related to the image occurred in 2015, way before the Shaheen Bagh protests started and is now being used to spread misinformation.

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