Days after Prime Minister Narendra Modi visited West Bengal and Odisha to take stock of the havoc created by Cyclone Amphan, a video has surfaced on the internet in which PM Modi and Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee can be seen walking towards a helicopter and in the background, people can be heard chanting ‘Chowkidar Chor hai’.
At the time of filing this report, the above post had been shared 3,700 times.
Crowds shouting at Modi “Chowkidar chor hai”…Meaning ‘the watchman is a thief’. Times not far when the crowd will become aggressive and start chasing BJP MLA’s and MP’s. #GharMeiGuskeMaro pic.twitter.com/gm2lfkZdFy
— Praecursator 🇬🇧 🇧🇪 🇨🇮🏆 (@Praecursator007) May 22, 2020
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FACT CHECK
NewsMobile fact-checked the above video and found it to be morphed.
We extracted the keyframes of the video and put them through Reverse Image Search along with relevant keywords such as ‘PM Modi’, ‘Mamata Banerjee’, ‘West Bengal’, ‘Cyclone Amphan’, etc. The search led us to the same video which was uploaded on the official Facebook page of ‘Akashvani Sangbad Kolkata’.
In the original video, no chants of ‘chowkidar chor hai’ can be heard. Hence, it becomes clear that the original video was manipulated using video editing software.
We then ran a search with keywords such as ‘chowkidar chor hai’, ‘PM Modi’, ‘BJP’. We found a video with the exact same chanting of ‘chowkidar chor hai’. The video is dated April 10, 2019 and was posted on the official YouTube channel of The Times of India.
According to the caption, the video was shot when Congress supporters chanted ‘Chowkidar Chor Hai’ at a BJP rally in Bengaluru during the 2019 Lok Sabha election campaigning.
Putting our discoveries together, it was established that the video in question has been doctored.
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