A 2012 image of a convict consoling his son while being taken away to prison in Ahmedabad has surfaced with a false anti-Citizenship Amendment Act narrative on social media. The image shows a moving moment between a father and his son as the latter is being driven to the prison after being convicted of the charges. It is being shared with the claim that it shows Assam police taking a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) supporter to the detention camp as his name was not there in the citizens’ list.
The set of images was shared by several users on social media, with the caption in Bengali, which translates to,
“Dad is going to detention camp. In a detention camp set up by the BJP. 12 lakh Hindus, 2 lakh Gorkhas, 5 lakh Muslims, we don’t know how they survived in the detention camp. If BJP wins it will do the same in West Bengal. Don’t forget the false speech of BJP. They will separate father, mother, son, daughter. Will finish everyone.”
National Register of Citizens (NRC) issues have been a key agenda at the Assembly poll campaigns in Assam and West Bengal by political parties. West Bengal chief minister and Trinamool Congress leader Mamata Banerjee recently hit out at the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) over the NRC, alleging the BJP government in Assam has started issuing notices to send people to detention camps.
After conducting a reverse image search, it was concluded that the image is from 2012. The image was captioned, “A convict consoles his son while being taken to prison after a court verdict in a 2002 religious violence case, in Ahmadabad, India. The court in western India found 32 people guilty of charges ranging from murder to rioting for their part in the deadly religious violence. The religious violence began following a train fire on Feb. 27, 2002, that killed 60 Hindu pilgrims. Muslims were blamed for the fire, leading to weeks of rioting in which Hindu mobs rampaged through towns and villages burning Muslim homes and businesses.”, and credited to news agency AP.
Thus, the image of the father-son duo, being circulated along with the newspaper clipping has no connection to the NRC or detention centres in Assam.
