Sambhal in Uttar Pradesh is a communally sensitive hotspot. After the survey of the mosque, violence in western UP’s Sambhal left four men dead. The city is even now in the grip of a communal crisis, amidst this Lighthouse Journalism found a video being shared on social media platforms. It is being claimed along with the video that RSS workers were apprehended with live weapons and ammunition being transported to Sambhal to ignite communal violence. During the investigation, we found that the video is old and is being shared as recent.
Claim:
X user @KhalsaVision shared the video with misleading claims.
Other users too are sharing the video with similar claims.
The video is also being circulated as recent without any claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video. Since the reverse image search did not yield many results, we went ahead with a keyword search on Google.
We searched for, “Weapons, pistols hidden in ghee recovered”
This led us to a news report published in Hindustan Times in September 2019.
Keyword search also took us to a video uploaded on a YouTube channel titled News Nation.
The description said: Delhi Police officials have seized as many as 26 pistols hidden below thick layers of ghee in plastic cans. The cache of guns has been recovered from a car and two arms dealers from east Delhi’s Ghazipur Road. Watch the full report.
Similarly, a video report was available on the YouTube channel Apna Gujarat published five years ago.
We also found the video uploaded on X in 2019.
Conclusion: A video from 2019, when 26 pistols were seized by police hidden in ghee cartons were recovered from arms dealers is being shared falsely linking it to Sambhal violence. The viral claim is misleading.
