Old video falsely portrayed as showing deadly India mosque survey clashes in 2024

Deadly clashes erupted in November 2024 in India’s Sambhal city in northern Uttar Pradesh state, sparked by a survey into whether a centuries-old mosque was built on a Hindu temple. But footage circulating online of police officers beating men wearing Muslim caps is unrelated to the recent clashes. The clip was filmed in a district hundreds of kilometres (miles) away from Sambhal and corresponds to videos published in 2019 news reports about protests against a controversial citizenship law.

“UP, Sambhal. Watch the police brutality in this video. Watch the video, the Muslims have neither stones nor any weapons in their hands! They were just protesting, but the police still charged at them,” read a Hindi-language Facebook post published on November 24, 2024.

The post includes a video that shows police officers beating people — many of whom can be seen wearing what appears to be a kufi, or a brimless, short and rounded cap — with sticks before the crowd dispersed.

The false video surfaced after violent protests broke out in Sambhal in the northern state of Uttar Pradesh (UP) over a court order to survey a local mosque that Hindus said was built on the site of a Hindu temple (archived link).

Screenshot of the false post taken on November 24, 2024

Street battles broke out in a bid to block a team of surveyors from the government’s Archaeological Survey of India (ASI) from entering the Shahi Jama Masjid in Sambhal.

At least six people died in the unrest and around 20 police officers were injured, according to a local official.

Indian media reported the country’s top court had suspended the order pending an appeal (archived link).

Activist groups have laid claim to several mosques they say were built over Hindu temples, including the mosque of Babri Masjid that was torn down in 1992.

Prime Minister Narendra Modi inaugurated a grand new Hindu temple on its site in the city of Ayodhya earlier this year.

The same video was shared alongside similar captions on X and Facebook.

But the footage first circulated in 2019 and corresponds to videos published about protests against the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) — a controversial legislation that eased the way for religious minorities to gain Indian citizenship, but not if they are Muslim (archived link).

Citizenship law protests

A reverse image search of keyframes on Google found a clip showing the same scene shared on YouTube on December 31, 2019 (archived link).

“Indian Police Beaten (sic) anti-Citizenship Law protester,” part of its title read.

Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in the false Facebook post (left) and the YouTube video from 2019 (right):

Images on Google Street View confirmed the video was filmed in Uttar Pradesh’s Gorakhpur district, which is more than 510 kilometres (316 miles) from Sambhal (archived link). 

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video (left) and its corresponding location on Google Street View showing the same shop (right):

The clip surfaced as deadly protests broke out across India against the citizenship law, with many of the deaths reported in Uttar Pradesh where police have been accused of using disproportionate force (archived link).

Local outlet ETV Bharat reported protesters in Gorakhpur pelted stones at the police, who responded by charging at the crowd to disperse them (archived link).

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