By Archis Chowdhury
Three old and unrelated images - two showing a man and a woman bleeding from their head, and one showing an injured old man - are being shared on Twitter with the false claim that they show Jain monks injured after being beaten by Muslims in Karnataka after the recent Assembly Elections.
BOOM found that the two images showing people bleeding from their head have been circulated online with various captions since 2018. The image of the old man shows a Jain monk who was the victim of an accident in Karnataka in 2018, involving a drunk motorcycle rider.
Following the Congress party's landslide victory in the Karnataka Assembly elections, social media has been flooded with false and misleading claims surrounding the poll results
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The three images were shared on Twitter by a user with a caption in Hindi, which when translated in English, reads, "See the vandalism of Muslims in Karnataka. Jain Muni was also not spared."
The image also contains a Hindi text, which translated in English as, "In Karnataka Muslims beat up a Jain monk, while chanting "Congress Zindabad" (Long Live Congress)", now the Congress is showing its true form, they will keep showing their love to Hindus who voted for them like this."
Click here to view an archive of the tweet. Trigger Warning: The tweet contain disturbing visuals.
Fact Check
BOOM cropped each of the images into separate photos, and looked for past instances of these images being shared using reverse image searches on Google and Yandex.
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Image 1
A reverse image search with the first image, showing an injured woman, led us to multiple posts containing the same photo, being shared with different narratives since 2018. BOOM also found that many of these posts also contained the other photo, showing a man bleeding.
One of these posts were made by Congress Rajya Sabha member Imran Pratapgarhi, who shared these images taking a dig at the Yogi Adityanath government in Uttar Pradesh, following an incident of lathi-charge by the UP Police on B.Ed TET applicants who were protesting for jobs, in 2018.
View these posts here, here and here.
A few obscure blogs (here and here) also shared both these images, linking them to the political violence around the West Bengal panchayat elections in 2018.
While BOOM could not independently verify origins of the photo of the woman, it is certain that it dates back to at least 2018, and are unrelated to the recently concluded assembly elections in Karnatka.
Image 2
The second image - showing a man bleeding profusely - shows the victim of an incident of domestic violence, where a man was beaten by his wife and her lover, following a confrontation about the extra-marital affair.
BOOM had fact-checked this image in 2018, when it went viral as Kanwar Yatra pilgrims attacked by Muslims.
According to our fact-check, the image originates from a report by Hindi news portal Royal Bulletin. Royal Bulletin also put out a recent update, clarifying that image was taken by them, and refuting the claim linking it to Muslims attacking Jain monks in Karnataka.
Image 3
The third image - showing an injured elderly man - shows a Jain monk who was injured after an accident involving a drunk motorcycle rider, in Karnataka.
In 2018, Mahesh Hegde, founder of fake news portal PostCard News had shared the image falsely claiming that the monk in the photo was the victim of an attack by Muslims. Hegde was eventually arrested by Bengaluru Police for promoting enmity between groups.
In 2018 BOOM had spoken to the authorities, who confirmed to us that there was no communal angle to the incident, and that it was an accident involving a drunk motorcycle rider.
