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  • FAKE ALERT: 2015 photo used to claim burqa-clad man went to Shaheen Bagh pretending to be a woman
This story is from January 20, 2020

FAKE ALERT: 2015 photo used to claim burqa-clad man went to Shaheen Bagh pretending to be a woman

A photo of a man donning a burqa is being shared on Twitter with a claim that he masqueraded as a Muslim woman to protest at Shaheen Bagh against Citizenship Amendment Act, 2019.
FAKE ALERT: 2015 photo used to claim burqa-clad man went to Shaheen Bagh pretending to be a woman
Key Highlights
  • A photo of a man donning a burqa is being shared on Twitter with a claim that he masqueraded as a Muslim woman to protest at Shaheen Bagh against CAA.
  • The photo is from 2015, when a burqa clad man was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama.
  • It has nothing to do with Shaheen Bagh protests.
CLAIM
A photo of a man donning a burqa is being shared on Twitter with a claim that he masqueraded as a Muslim woman to protest at Shaheen Bagh against Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA), 2019.

“At Shaheen Bagh, Balma (read: men) are protesting wearing Salma’s burqa to earn Rs 500 and a plate of biryani,” read a loose translation of caption in Hindi given to the photo by a Twitter user.

The caption seems to have taken cue from social media claims that claimed that Muslim women were being paid Rs 500 each daily to protest at Shaheen Bagh.
TRUTH
The photo is from 2015, when a burqa clad man was arrested in Jammu and Kashmir’s Pulwama. It has nothing to do with Shaheen Bagh protests.
VERIFICATION AND METHODOLOGY
Using reverse-image search on Google, we found a report from jkreport.com, which carried a full length version of the same photo now being shared as that of a man who was caught protesting as a woman in Shaheen Bagh. The report has no time stamp.

Titled ‘A burqa clad man was arrested today in Pulwama’, the report gives some details about how the man, allegedly a terrorist, was caught by the Jammu Kashmir Police.
We also found a tweet from a Twitter handle by the name of Kashmir Dispatch, tweeting the same photo on October 16, 2015 with caption “#Pulwama firing update: One burqa-clad man namely Traiq Ahamd of Drach Pulwama arrested. #Kashmir”

Using keywords from this tweet and report above, we dug further and found an NDTV report dated October 16, 2015.
Titled ‘2 Injured After Burqa-Clad Terrorist Opens Fire in Kashmir’, the report mentions that two people were injured after a burqa-clad gunman opened indiscriminate fire in Pulwama district. The burqa-clad attacker was later arrested.
VERDICT
Times Fact Check has found that a photo of a burqa-clad man from 2015 is being shared with a false claim that a man wore a burqa to Shaheen Bagh to masquerade as a Muslim woman.
End of Article
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