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| - Fact Check: Are Muslims wearing turbans in protests to show that Sikhs are against CAA?
A video of a policeman removing a man's turban and taking him away is going viral on social media with the claim that Muslims are posing as Sikhs to show that Sikhs are against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act. India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false.
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India Today Fact Check
Viral video is more than eight years old and has no relation to the CAA protests
A video of a policeman removing a man’s turban and taking him away is going viral on social media with the claim that Muslims are posing as Sikhs to show that Sikhs are against the Citizenship (Amendment) Act.
Several Facebook pages and users such as Namo and Heena Thaker have posted the video along with the claim.
The same claim has been made by some Twitter users such as @deen9600. Writer Ravi Rai had also tweeted the claim, but later deleted it. The archived version of his tweet can be seen here.
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found the claim to be false. The viral video is more than eight years old and has no relation to the ongoing anti-CAA protests. The incident took place in 2011 in Punjab’s Mohali.
The video has gone viral on Facebook.
AFWA probe
With the help of keyword searches such as turban removed by police on YouTube, we found several videos of the incident.
YouTube channel Sikh Touch had uploaded the same video on March 31, 2011, with the caption, Sikh Youth’s turban removed 28 March 2011 @ Mohali Stadium Mohali Stadium by a Punjab Police.
Several YouTubers such as Paul Singh and YouTube channels such as Chardikla TimeTv have uploaded similar videos of the same incident with captions which broadly say that Punjab police removed the turban of a man. These videos were uploaded between March 28 and 31, 2011.
What happened in Mohali on March 28, 2011?
We looked for news reports related to the incident and found that The Times of India and The Indian Express had covered it during that time.
As per these reports, the incident was the fallout of a standoff between protesting rural veterinary pharmacists and Punjab police near Mohali’s PCA Stadium. The protest took place on March 28, 2011, just two days before the high-voltage ICC Cricket World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan at Mohali stadium.
According to The Indian Express, at around 12.45 pm, hundreds of retrenched veterinary pharmacists, who were already in an indefinite protest seeking restoration and regularisation of their services, began marching towards the stadium. Police tried to disperse the crowd forcefully when they tried to enter the high-security zone.
United Sikhs, a global organisation of Sikhs, had filed a complaint against the Punjab police before the Mohali judicial magistrate for removing a Sikh youth’s turban near PCA stadium, Mohali, on 28th March, 2011.
On March 31, 2011, The Times of India reported that two gazetted officers of Punjab police, including an SP and SHO, have been suspended for allegedly removing the turban of a Sikh protester.
Conclusion
The eight-year-old video of a policeman removing a man’s turban in Mohali has been falsely linked with the ongoing anti-CAA protests in the viral claim. This is not a Muslim impersonating a Sikh as claimed in the viral post.
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