Thread by @akhmxt

On April 22, this user tweeted a video with the claim that Muslims pelted stones at a train after it "interrupted" their prayers. He later added two more videos to back his claim.

So what's the truth? let me break it down for you in this thread 🧵 1/n

Video 1: Youth pelting stone

For this video, I simply broke down the video into keyframes and performed a Google reverse image search. This showed two results that had thumbnails similar to the viral video.
2/n

I read the translated version of the article and it appears that this was done by students of a government college in Chennai? We cannot fully rely on Google translate so it needs more digging
3/n

So I did another keyword search "Chennai students pelt stones" and came across various news reports about this incident.
4/n

The article by India Today was fairly simple, it clearly states that this was a rivalry between two college students. The article also included the video of the incident. Clearly, the claim made by the user was false 5/n

You can read the India Today article here

indiatoday.in/crime/story/ch…

below, I have compared the thumbnail of the India Today article with a still from the viral video.
6/n

Video 2: Minors destroying railway station

I watched this video carefully and noticed many clues. The first one was a signboard that read, “Naopara Mahishasur”. Upon doing a Google keyword search, I found that the station is located in the Murshidabad district of West Bengal
7/n

At 0:48 seconds, the camera pans and the surroundings of the station are visible. After comparing the visuals with the satellite imagery available on Google Earth Pro, it was confirmed that the location is indeed Naopara Mahishasur Station located in West Bengal. 8/n

So far we know that the video is from Naopara Mahishasur Station in Bengal. But we don't know why or when it happened. Let's see if there are any news reports on this incident. I performed keyword searches in both Eng and Bangla but no successful results 9/n

Since there were no news reports I have assumed it to be an old video. I could be wrong but this is a theory that has not been proved or disproved. So time to do more digging. 10/n

So I performed multiple keyword searches on Facebook and came across various visuals of youth destroying station property. This way two Facebook posts that were made around December 2019 came to my notice. Both of these posts featured the Vigo Video ID # 80770612896.
11/n

It is important to note that the keyword searches on FB were done in both English and Bengali. Since it's a video from West Bengal, there is a higher chance that this would be shared in the regional language.

12/n

Upon comparing these Facebook posts with the viral video, I noticed that one of the youths seen in the viral video is most likely seen in the two Facebook posts

However, I cannot see his face and there are not many things to compare except for the hair and shirt. 13/n

I continued watching the video and noticed that at 0:14 seconds in the viral video, a room is visible that matches the photos posted on Facebook.
14/n

So far:
1. No news reports of such an incident taking place
2. Two FB posts from the same location that were posted in Dec 2019

Based on all the pieces of evidence it is safe to conclude this is most likely from 2019.
What we don't know is why this happened?
15/n

To answer this "why?" we need to look at the third video.

Video 3: People uprooting railway tracks

I did keyword searches on Twitter and came across two videos posted on December 16, 2019. In both these videos, we can see people trying to uproot a railway track. 16/n

Both these tweets claim claimed to be from Naopara Mahishasur. In fact, in the first video, you can hear the recorder say “there will be no NRC” and the second tweet has the hashtag "#CAAProtests".

This was most likely from the anti-CAA-NRC protest in Bengal 17/n

I watched both the videos carefully and noticed that At 0:52 secs in the first tweet, we can see a youth who is also visible in the video of the second tweet at 0:17 secs. This confirms that the video is from the same protest. 18/n

Now that I was sure that the two tweets from 2019 are of the same protest, I compared the visuals in the viral video with that seen in one of the tweets and found some matches. This confirmed that the video is from the same protest from December 2019. 19/n

for context, West Bengal did witness a very violent protest in December 2019. To understand why this was violent one needs a deeper insight into the local politics.

20/n

So what do we know so far?
Video 1: stone-pelting - this is a recent video from Chennai and has no Muslim angle to it.

Video 2 and Vide 3: old videos from WB and possibly have a Muslim angle. However, any person familiar with Bengal politics can explain that the...
21/n

...anti-CAA-NRC protest that happened across India in 2019 was violent from state to state depending on the local sentiments and just a few months after this in 2020, the capital of the country witnessed a deadly riot.
22/n

NOTE: wherever I have mentioned that I performed keyword searches, I did them in both English and Bengali (via Google translate).

End of thread 23/23