Old pix of burning cars, movie screengrab — ‘fake’ Tripura violence posts being probed by police

Police probe says the 102 social media users charged with UAPA used images from other parts of India and different years to show that violence and vandalism had occurred.

Members of students' and lawyers' organisations protest against the Tripura government in Delhi | ANI

Agartala: An image of a Quran burnt in an accidental fire in a Delhi Rohingya camp, an old photograph of burning cars in Agartala, even a screen grab from the film Parzania — a Tripura Police investigation has found that these are some of the visuals that were passed off by social media handles as alleged proof of communal violence and vandalism in the state last month.

The police booked 102 social media users under sections of the Unlawful Activities (Prevention) Act (UAPA) following reported incidents involving the vandalism of mosques in several parts of the state, and this action had drawn flak.

Now, ThePrint has gained exclusive access to the posts and tweets under investigation, in order to analyse the grounds on which these FIRs had been filed.

A recent press release from the office of Tripura Director General of Police V.S. Yadav stated that 128 social media posts came on the police’s radar — 94 Twitter posts, 32 Facebook posts and 2 YouTube posts, according to a report in The Indian Express.

The police had also initiated action against four lawyers of an independent fact-finding team who had visited the state in the days following the alleged incidents. 

‘Fake’ and ‘exaggerated’ posts

Until last week, the Tripura Police had gathered “evidence” about at least 41 social media posts, which included 28 Twitter posts and 13 Facebook posts. Of the 41, 16 Twitter handles had been mentioned in the FIRs filed on 6 November. 

The posts have been categorised into ‘fake tweets’ (24), ‘exaggerated tweets’ (4), and ‘fake Facebook posts’ (13). As many as 37 Facebook accounts and Twitter handles had tweeted and shared photos and videos that the Tripura Police have found to be fake. 

For instance, 18 of these handles and accounts had tweeted pictures of two men purportedly holding partially burnt copies of the Quran. The accompanying captions claimed that the pictures had been taken in Tripura around the time of the incidents last month. 

“An image showing two young men holding copies of the holy Quran, with the captions identifying them as Muslims attacked in Tripura, is going viral on Twitter. A fact check by Newschecker found that the image was from earlier this year, and was captured in Delhi shortly after a fire ravaged a Rohingya camp,” the police said in their investigation. 

The probe found that other images of the fire in the Rohingya refugee camp were also used by some handles when tweeting about the situation in Tripura.

Another user had tweeted an image of two burning cars, with the caption ‘#TripuraAntiMuslimRiots #Tripura’. The image was shared by four other users.

“A Google reverse search shows several media reports from 10 September this year that carried the same image. The articles said that the images were from Agartala and showed attacks on media houses and CPI(M) offices by BJP workers,” the police noted. 

In a third instance, a social media user, Akil Akhter, who identified himself as a Trinamool Congress worker, had tweeted pictures of large mobs along with the captions, “Muslims are under attack in the Indian state of Tripura Many Houses, Shops and 12 mosques have been burnt down…. (sic)”. 

The police investigation, however, found the image to be from a Vishva Hindu Parishad rally in Kolkata, which was “nowhere related to violence in Tripura”. 

A video that had been tweeted by one Asjad Subhani was found to be fake as “the signboard on shops is written in Hindi, which is not the language used in Tripura”. 

Screengrab from Parzania 

Meanwhile, the 13 Facebook posts that were found to be fake had also put out the same pictures, including one which was a “screengrab from Parzania (a 2007 film) inspired by the true story of a little Parsi boy that went missing during the Gulbarga Society massacre in Ahmedabad in 2002”. 

The four “exaggerated tweets” included journalist Aarif Shah’s tweet, in which he had said, “Hindutva organisations started violence against Muslims in Tripura, 8 mosques set on fire and hundreds of houses looted & destroyed. No media courage, no outrage [sic].”

Then there was a post that had been tweeted from the handle @TheNoorMahvish, which included pictures of Muslim-owned shops in North Tripura burning, as well as a caption that blamed the VHP, RSS and Hindu Yuva Vahini for the incidents. 

The police stated that notices had been sent to Twitter over three of the tweets, while the fourth one which had been tweeted from the handle @AdilTalks had been deleted. 

Of the 41 social media posts, 19 had been “withheld in India in response to a legal demand”, eight were deleted, while the rest still remained.

Analysis of 68 Twitter handles

ThePrint examined 47 of the 68 Twitter handles that had been included in the list of 102 against whom FIRs were filed. Of these, 38 had been deleted and nine remained. Six posts carried pictures of the men holding the Quran, which the police had found to be from the Delhi Rohingya camp. The other posts questioned the administration over the incidents. 

The users included seven who identified themselves as journalists and two as heads of religious organisations. The rest included students, a member of the Indian Youth Congress, two workers of the All India Majlis-e-Ittehadul Muslimeen, a Trinamool worker, and three activists. The others didn’t identify themselves or their accounts had been deleted. 

(With inputs from Regina Mihindukulasuriya)

(Edited by Saikat Niyogi)