An attempted jab at India by Pakistani PM Imran Khan backfired after a video posted to his Twitter account, purportedly showing Indian police carrying out an anti-Muslim “pogrom,” turned out to be fake.

A series of three videos (since removed) were posted to Khan’s account on Friday, with the PM claiming they showed a brutal crackdown on India’s Muslims by local police.

The first video, captioned “Indian police's pogrom against Muslims in UP [Uttar Pradesh]” was particularly gruesome – it showed what appeared to be riot police beating up “civilians” with sticks and shooting at them as they bled.

Pak PM @ImranKhanPTI tweets an old video of violence from Bangladesh and says, 'Indian police's pogrom against Muslims in UP.' (ANI) pic.twitter.com/FiCestRfaW — Times of India (@timesofindia) January 3, 2020

Eagle-eyed users promptly pointed out, however, that the video was not what Khan or those handling his account claimed it to be. Upon closer inspection, it turned out the video was not even shot in India. Ever-vigilant online sleuths determined it showed the Bangladeshi Rapid Action Battalion (RAB) counter-terrorist police force cracking down on an Islamist group in the country’s capital city, Dhaka seven years ago. It could be argued that it was relatively easy to trace back the origins of the footage, since the uniforms and insignias of the RAB are visible in the video.

Dhaka is UP, 2Bangladesh is India, 2013 is 020. Police brutality is pogrom. Just like Germany and Japan share borders and history has little mention of Jesus. Imran Khan’s twitter circus is no different from his spoken gaffes. Endless embarrassment. pic.twitter.com/BUJYoZaO9G — Syed Talat Hussain (@TalatHussain12) January 3, 2020

The mix-up did not go unnoticed by the Indian part of the Twittersphere, including by the country’s law enforcement, as the Uttar Pradesh police soon tagged Khan in a post with a link to the original video from Bangladesh.

India’s envoy to the UN, Syed Akbaruddin, joined in the criticism. The diplomat shared a video compilation of Khan’s posts, accompanying it with the caption “Repeat Offenders” and the hashtag #oldhabitsdiehard.

The video stayed on Khan’s Twitter for about an hour before it was pulled without any explanation. Two others, dubbed ‘Indian Police attacking Muslims as part of Modi Govt's ethnic cleansing’, remained online for a little longer but ultimately vanished as well.

One of these two clips was later traced back to a November 2019 farmers’ protests in Unnao district in Uttar Pradesh.



It was not immediately clear whether or not the third video was authentic.

Pakistan Prime Minister Imran Khan has deleted all three videos from his Twitter timeline in which he falsely claimed that Police was carrying out a pogrom against Muslims in Uttar Pradesh. https://t.co/NF7iDMliI9 — ANI (@ANI) January 3, 2020

The incident sparked a storm of mockery and criticism from Indian netizens, as they took to the social media platform to vent their anger – or amusement in some cases – over Khan’s apparent social media faux pas.

Pakistan PM Imran Khan is so geographically challenged that earlier for him Germany&Japan were immediate neighbours with a common border. Now he’s passing off a video from Bangladesh as that from India. Jhooth Bole Kauwa Kaate. pic.twitter.com/JtgQqccAVj — Priyanka Chaturvedi (@priyankac19) January 3, 2020

Shameful that the Prime Minister of Pakistan doesn’t even do basic fact checks and tweets old videos without verification. Irresponsible and dangerous @ImranKhanPTI — Nidhi Razdan (@Nidhi) January 3, 2020

Some said he should hire a better social media team – implying that the mishap will see the current one given the boot.

This video is from Bangladesh, not India. Why do we have to tell you this? Get a competent social media team. Absolutely ridiculous. — 🐼 (@TheChimPrint) January 3, 2020

Least the fool can do is hire a competent social media firm to spread his trash 😂 he’s pathetic ! — Madhura Mandal 🇮🇳 (@MandalMadhura) January 3, 2020

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