Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
Karnataka has seen widespread protests after some students wearing hijabs were denied entry into a school for not following the dress code recently. After a few protests turned violent, Karnataka CM Basavaraj Bommai ordered the closure of all high schools and colleges on February 9, 10 and 11. In light of these incidents a video is going viral on social media with a claim that Muslim women are being tortured across the country for wearing hijab.
In the video, a group of young boys can be seen throwing buckets of water on girls wearing hijab while they are seen attempting to escape.
Newschecker team received several requests on our WhatsApp Helpline (+91 9999499044) for fact-checking this claim.
The video can be found on twitter with different claims.
The Karnataka Hijab row has reached the national level with one student filing a petition in the Supreme Court challenging the schools decision to deny students from wearing hijab. The Supreme Court has deferred an urgent hearing saying that this matter does not need to be escalated to a national level. Earlier in the week Karnataka HC had ordered students not to wear religious attire till the case is ongoing in court.
Factcheck/ Verification
To verify the authenticity of the video, Newschecker conducted a reverse image search of the key-frames of the video on Google and found videos on social media from 2019 from Eastern University in Sri Lanka where a group of senior students are seen ragging the juniors.
Upon performing a keyword search, Newschecker found several media reports from 24 November, 2019 including a video report by Lanka Sun News uploaded on their Facebook page.
Our team also found the video on the Youtube channel of Colombo daily.
The video was published on a news website called Puthithu run by Sri Lankans living abroad on 24 November, 2019.
The report claimed that they had confirmed with the students of Eastern University in Sri Lanka that it was an incident of ragging which was captured.
Conclusion
The video of water being thrown at hijab-wearing women is not from India, but rather a video of senior students at Eastern University of Sri Lanka ragging juniors, including hijab-wearing women.
Result: False Context/False
Our Sources
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Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
