Not for performing azaan, elderly man in India was detained for different reason
A video has circulated on Facebook claiming that police are taking away an elderly man because he performed the azaan at a mosque in India. However, Dismislab’s fact-check has found that the claim is not true. The incident in the video took place on May 28, 2024, in the city of Indore, in India’s Madhya Pradesh. Various news reports state that, after a court ruling in a case at the Indore district court did not go in his favor, the person visible in the video threw a garland of shoes at the judge. Following this incident, lawyers present at the court caught and beat the person and handed him over to the police.
A 17-second video was posted from a Facebook page named New Saiful. In the video, a person is heard saying, “What punishment did he have to suffer for performing the azaan at a mosque in India, brother — witness the video with your own eyes. If you are Muslim, share this video as widely as possible, and give every Muslim in the world the chance to see it.” The post read, “Because of performing the azaan at a mosque” (verbatim).
As of the publication of this report, the video had been viewed more than 350,000 times and shared more than 21,000 times. In the comments, one person wrote, “We will take control up to Kolkata — up to Kolkata is in Bangladesh’s map, the British map.”
Through a key-frame search, Dismislab found several news reports published on May 28 and 29, 2024 (1, 2, 3). The scenes in the recently circulated video match exactly with the images in reports published by these India-based news outlets.
Regarding this matter, a report by NDTV reveals that 70-year-old Mohammad Salim had filed a case in court alleging that a mosque had been built by illegally occupying government land in the Azad Nagar area of Indore. During the court proceedings, as no evidence of encroachment was found, the judge dismissed Salim’s petition.
Assistant Commissioner of Police (ACP) Vinod Kumar Dixit told NDTV‘s journalists, “As soon as he heard this decision from the court, Salim took out a garland of shoes that he had hidden in his clothing and threw it at the judge.” Mohammad Salim’s son, Mohammad Rais, alleged that the lawyers tore his father’s clothes. He further stated that police personnel rescued him and his father from the lawyers and took them to MG Road police station.
In other words, the claim that the elderly man was taken away by police for reciting the azaan at a mosque is not correct.
All social media captions, quotations, and news excerpts in this article have been translated into English from the languages in which they were originally posted or published.
