Has the Central Govt Taken Custody of Kashmir Mosques?
While the images are real, none of them are from Jammu and Kashmir.
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On Monday, 5 August, the Modi-led government effectively revoked Article 370 in Jammu & Kashmir. A set of images are now circulating with the claim that the central government has taken custody of all the mosques in Kashmir. The Quint received a query on the claim made about the images. Let’s take a look at these images one by one.
IMAGE 1
We reverse searched the image on Google and found a Navbharat Times article which was published on 11 July. The article mentioned that in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district, police had raided a house and madrasa and seized illegal weapons. Six people had been arrested for it.
Since the article did not have the image, we tracked tweets shared by Bijnor Police and found that the image was actually shared by their Twitter handle on 11 July.
IMAGE 2
On reverse searching the image on Google, we found an article published by The Statesman on 29 July. The article mentioned that the incident was from Uttar Pradesh’s Shamli district and the police had held four Myanmar citizens for illegally staying in Shamli.
We also found that the same picture was shared by Shamli police on their Twitter handle on 29 July. Along with the four who were arrested, caretakers of three madrasas were also held.
IMAGE 3
According to fact-checking website Alt News, this image was uploaded on Tumblr and dates back to 3 March.
IMAGE 4
On conducting a simple reverse search we came across a tweet which suggested that the picture was from a Kirpan factory in Patiala. The picture was attributed to India Today.
Consequently, we looked for Kirpan factories in Patiala and stumbled upon ‘Khalsa Kirpan Factory’. The Quint then contacted the factory owner Bachan Singh and he confirmed to us that the picture was from their warehouse. He told us that swords in the picture were kirpans (a small dagger carried by Sikhs). He also told us that the picture was taken at their warehouse from where they pack and supply these kirpans to the whole of Punjab.
IMAGE 5
The Quint had earlier debunked the same photo which went viral with the false claim that weapons were found in a mosque in Gujarat. The image was actually taken when the Rajkot detection of crime branch and Kuvadava Road police had busted a racket of illegal weapons on the Rajkot-Ahmedabad highway and five were held for it.
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