Fact-Check: Anti-India and hashtags on Kashmir trend on Middle-Eastern Twitter with false claims

Since October 10,2021,  many hashtags related to India and Kashmir started to trend on Middle Eastern Twitter. These hashtags include #india_is_the_terrorist_country,  #help_Kashmir, #Modi_is_a_terrorist  , #save_kashmir, #free_kashmir. Each of these hashtags were supplemented with their Arabic versions as well. 

The hashtags on Kashmir called for the people to come together and stop India from ‘terrorizing’ Kashmir. Within this hashtag, many users posted pictures to support their claim and we will be fact checking some of them. 

One such claim is the use of a man surrounded by other being beaten up on the street. 

Fact-Check:

Upon reverse searching the image we found thousands of reports covering the late Reuter’s photojournalist Danish Siddiqui’s repertoire and found that he took this picture during the Delhi riots in 2020.

The second image used in the post is that of a crying boy. Upon reverse searching the image we found that the image too is from the Delhi riots and not Kashmir. The boy seen crying is the son of Muddasir Khan who lost his life during the riots. 

Since both these pictures are from Delhi riots and not Kashmir, this claim is misleading. 

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DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

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