Fact Check: Does Viral Pic Show People Protesting Against Delhi CM Kejriwal’s Arrest?

There is a lot of news on social media sites very quickly, which often leads to the spread of fake information. Another bit of news going around on platform X with a picture says that the people in the picture are protesting against the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. However, this report was found to be false after it was looked into. These kinds of events show how important it is to check information before passing it on to stop the spread of fake information and keep people from being misled by false stories.

What is going viral?

According to a post on the social media site X by @Jeetuburdak, thousands of people have gathered in the streets to protest the arrest of Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal. It says under the picture, “his picture shows that the end of dictatorship is certain… People are out in the streets against Kejriwal’s arrest.” It was also said in the post that the site was in Chennai.

Someone else shared the same picture with the words, “This picture proves that Congress is doomed… People are protesting against sitting ducks in Congress.” This person also said that it was from Delhi.

Fact check

To begin, we used Google Open Search to look for news about the protests in Chennai against Kejriwal’s arrest, but we couldn’t find any. Next, we looked for protests against the Congress party in Delhi, but we couldn’t find any. After that, we used Google Lens to make the picture go viral. As soon as we did this, we found a number of claims that were shared along with the picture. But we saw an Instagram post that someone named sri_mandir had shared. In the caption, it said that people who love God are engaged, and it had hashtags like #rathyatra #Puri #Jagannath and the words “God’s own people!” Hashtags like #rathyatra #Puri #Jagannath #Jagannathtemple #RathaYatra2023 #Odisha #India #JaiJagannath #People were also used.

We also found other pictures on the user’s page that looked a lot like this one. This made us think that the picture has something to do with the Ratha Yatra at the Lord Jagannath Temple in Odisha.

What came out in the fact check?

It was found that the picture going around social media wasn’t taken at the protest against Kejriwal’s arrest; it was taken at the Ratha Yatra of Lord Jagannath. The picture has been shared in the wrong way. So, the claim is completely wrong.