BOOM: A video of a people carrying Islamic flags during a bike rally organised in Latur, Maharashtra, on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi in September 2024, is being shared on social media with the false claim that it shows a recent Congress rally in Akola.
BOOM found that the viral video is actually from a Milad-un-Nabi celebration in Latur, Maharashtra, and is not related to election campaigning in Akola.
Akola is situated in the eastern Vidarbha region of the state, whereas Latur is situated in the southern Marathwada region of Maharashtra. The flags seen in the video are Islamic flags and there is no ISIS flag as being claimed.
Assembly elections in Maharashtra are scheduled for November 20, 2024, with results set to be announced on November 23. In the Akola West constituency, Vijay Agarwal is the BJP candidate up against Congress’s Sajid Khan Pathan.
Claim:
The video was posted on X by the handle @MeghUpdates, with the caption, “Look at their flags. Flags of Palestine, Iran, Iraq, ISIS, Hezbollah! …. No Indian flag. Guess this election rally is from which country? Congress party candidate Sajid Khan Mastan Khan election rally in Akola west of secular Maharashtra!”
BOOM has previously debunked misinformation posted by Megh Updates on X.
Click here to view the post. Archive.
Investigation:
The viral video is actually from a bike rally organised in Latur, Maharashtra on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi in September 2024. The flags seen in the video are Islamic flags and not ISIS flags as being claimed.
BOOM had previously fact-checked the same video when it was being shared on social media in October 2024 with the false claim that it was from a Congress rally in Mewat, Haryana, during the state assembly election
We found the same video was uploaded by several users in September 2024 stating that it is from a procession taken out on the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi in Latur, Maharashtra.
Taking a cue from this, we searched for related keywords on YouTube and found other videos of this rally on local news channels named ‘ Latur News Official ‘ and ‘ Bharatsatta’.
In the video we can see several Islamic flags and Indian flags. The viral posts falsely claim that the flags in the video are from the terrorist organisation – ISIS, and that no Indian flags are present in the rally.
Below we can see people also holding Indian flags along with Islamic flags during the bike rally.
BOOM had then reached out to Hamid Sheikh, editor of ‘Bharat Satta’ who confirmed that the video was from Latur and the rally took place on September 19, 2024 in Latur city to mark the occasion of Milad-un-Nabi. The street view of the area can be seen here.
We had also reached out to the Latur City Policewho confirmed that the video is from the Milad-un-Nabi rally.
(This fact check article was originally published by BOOM and has been republished by Lighthouse Journalism as a part of Shakti Collective.)
