Social media platforms on Tuesday were awash with a post that alleged that thousands of swords and pistols have been seized from a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh’s Bijnor district alongside the arrest of six people.
The post went viral in no time, with a legion of social media users amplifying the claims made in it by sharing and reposting them on their timelines and chat groups.
A Twitter user with the handle @satviksoul posted a tweet on March 29, 2022, claiming that the Bijnor Police had seized arms, guns, pistols and swords from a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh. The tweet instantly went viral, racking up more than 1,500 retweets.
Similarly, others too joined in to spread the claim that a huge cache of arms has been seized in Bijnor. A Twitter user with the handle @theVAG_A_BOND posted a tweet insinuating that the swords were gathered for ‘jihad purpose’. “Arms seized from Madrassa in Bijnor, Uttar Pradesh. If this wasn’t for Jihad, then what was it for?”, the tweet read.
The truth about the viral claim
Even as social media platforms were replete with posts asserting that arms and ammunition were recovered from a madrassa in Uttar Pradesh, the Bijnor police took cognisance of the viral claims made and issued a clarification. In its clarification, Bijnor police shared an old post made by the account that declared the claims and the images being bandied around as fake and misleading. It quoted a tweet posted by it on 8 November 2020, wherein it had issued a clarification after similar claims of arms and ammunition being seized from a madrassa were being peddled then.
The police had then stated that the case was about the arrest of 6 people, from whom they had recovered 1 pistol, 4 guns, 49 cartridges and 1 car. It further added that the images showing thousands of guns and swords shown on the sofa were fake.
“Bijnor Police refutes the news regarding the recovery of thousands of guns and swords in a Madrasa under Sherkot police station area of Bijnor district”, the Police said adding that the images shared along with the tweet were fake. “In 2019, the Police had arrested 6 people and had recovered only 1 pistol, 4 guns, 49 cartridges and 1 car. The image with the tweet that shows thousands of swords and guns on the sofa is fake”, the Police had said in its tweet on November 08, 2020.
— Bijnor Police (@bijnorpolice) March 29, 2022
In July 2019, a person named Jitendra Meena had first tweeted the fake images and had said that Muslims had collected thousands of swords and guns to create violence in the state of Uttar Pradesh. “Police arrested 6 people who had planned to create violence in Bijnor. As if these people have forgotten that Bijnor is in Uttar Pradesh and CM of Uttar Pradesh is Yogi Adityanath. Government should ban the madrassas,” the tweet had read.
The Police then had said that the madrassa operated as a ‘hikmat’ (a place where a hakim prescribes medicines). The illegal weapon smugglers would come pretending to be patients. No one suspected that the ‘patients’ were arms smugglers. Police had suspected that one Sabir, who hailed from Bihar, was the main supplier. He had got a ‘Shiv Sena’ sticker on his car which he used for smuggling so that no one would suspect him.
Acting on a tip-off, the police had raided the madrassa and recovered 5 pistols and 49 cartridges. Zafar Islam, Noor Ali, Mohammad Sabir, Azizurahman and Fahim were arrested in connection with the case. The police later issued a clarification stating that claims of thousands of pistols being recovered from the place and the images that had gone viral on the social media were all fake.
