More than 45 people have died in Delhi’s recent communal violence. As tensions deplete, misinformation continues to be shared rampantly on social media. The following pictures are being widely shared online.

Image 1: A photo of policeman wearing protective gear attacking a minor with a stick has gone social media with the claim that Delhi Police is beating a Muslim boy. This image is viral on Twitter and Facebook.

Facebook user Anil Kumar Yadav shared the viral image. It has been shared over 32,000 times.

On February 29, Udit Raj, former MP and Indian National Member (INC) tweeted (archive link) this image as well. However, he did not claim that the image is from New Delhi, instead, he posted a short poem.

Image 2: An image of children hugging a woman in despair has gone viral with the claim that it is also from recent communal violence in Delhi. This image was posted (archive link) by a Facebook user which was shared over 200 times. Just like the previous image, on March 1, Raj tweeted (archive link) this image with a short poem.

Fact-check

Image 1: Performing a reverse image search on TinEye, Alt News found the viral image on Getty Images. The caption states, “A Bangladeshi policeman threatens a child with a baton during clashes with garment workers in Dhaka on June 30, 2010. At least 15,000 protesting garment factory workers blocked key roads in the Bangladeshi capital Dhaka, the latest in a string of protests over low wages and poor conditions. Police fired tear gas and used water cannons to disperse the workers, who sew clothes for some of the top names in Western retail, after they blocked a major intersection in the north of the city.”

This image was also used in a 2010 report by The Guardian.

Image 2: This image too was located on Getty Images via reverse image search on TinEye. According to the caption, “A Syrian woman comforts her children after their house in the Sahour neighbourhood of the northern Syrian city of Aleppo was bombed in 2014.” The photograph is shot by photographer Zein-Al-Rifai.

This image was also used in a photo essay on Siryan war by CBS News, news division of US-based Columbia Broadcasting System.

Social media claim that these images are from recent Delhi riots are therefore false. While INC member Udit Raj didn’t claim that these images are from Delhi, his poetry and the timing of the tweets gave the impression that they pertain to the violence in the capital.

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