By Hazel Gandhi
A video purporting to show Pakistani flags being raised at a recent rally in Hyderabad, Telangana is viral online with the false claim that the incident took place under the Congress government's rule in the state.
BOOM found that the video is at least six months old and was taken before the Congress came to power in the state. Further, the video does not show Pakistani flags and was taken during the celebrations of Milad un Nabi.
The video shows Islamic flags being raised in a rally near the Tank Bund area in Hyderabad, Telangana. News outlet Asianet reported on the video based on a now-deleted X post by BL Srinivas Solanky, BJP Telangana's spokesperson.
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The video is also circulating on X with the caption, "Telangana voted for Congress. They deserve this. (Video allegedly from Hyderabad, Tank Bund)"
Click here to view the post and here for an archive.
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FACT CHECK
BOOM found that the video is at least as old as October 2023 and shows an Islamic flag, not the flag of Pakistan.
We found that the Hyderabad City Police's official X handle had replied to one of the users who had shared the video and clarified that it was old. The post mentioned that the incident took place during Milad un Nabi, a day that marks Prophet Mohammed's birth anniversary.
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Taking a cue from this, we ran a keyword search for the incident using "Tank Bund Milad un Nabi" and found a video shared by a YouTube channel, Hyderabad Deccan NEWS. The video was shared on October 2, 2023 with a title that roughly translated from Hindi to English as, 'Bike rally at Tank Bund on the occasion of Milad un Nabi'. This 34-second clip was an exact match to the viral video.
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Congress came to power in Telangana on December 3, 2023, months after this video was shot. Prior to this, the state was under Chief Minister K Chandrashekar Rao, a member of Bharat Rashtra Samithi (BRS), a state party in Telangana.
We looked at the viral video closely and found that the flags in the video did not match the flag of Pakistan. A key difference was the white band seen in the flag of Pakistan that was missing in the viral video's flags.
Below is a comparison between the Islamic flags seen in the viral video and the flag of Pakistan.
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