In our investigation, we found out that the claim that Umar Khalid chanted 'Hinduon se Azadi' slogan during the demonstration at Gateway of India is completely false.
Following the JNU attacks on 5th December, a protest was organized at the Gateway of India, Mumbai. Activist Umar Khalid joined the protest, after which several social media users claimed that 'Hinduon se Azadi' slogan was chanted during the demonstration.
Spokesperson of the Delhi Unit of the Bharatiya Janata Party, Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga, shared an 18-second clip alleging that students in Mumbai raised slogans "Hinduo se Aazadi". Khalid can be spotted in the video raising slogans as protesters reply with the chorus of Aazadi.
You can watch the video clip shared by Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga here:
Major Surendra Poonia also shared this video.
The video was shared on Facebook as well with the same claim.
In our investigation, we were able to ascertain that during the protest, 'Hinduon se Azadi' slogan was not chanted.
We found a video on Facebook in which Khalid's voice can be clearly heard.
"NPR se Azaadi, CAA se Azaadi, CAA se Azaadi, Jaativaad se Azaadi (Freedom from casteism), Sanghvaad se Azaadi, RSS se Azaadi, RSS se Azaadi, Mohan Bhagwat se Azaadi".
These are the slogans, which can be heard in the video.
On comparing the video shared by Bagga and the above video, we found that the audio matched as one can hear "Jaativaad se Azaadi" before the alleged slogan and "RSS se Azadi" slogan at the end of the 18-second clip. In the above clip from the 54 seconds onwards, one can hear Khalid chant, "Sanghvaad se Azaadi" (freedom from the ideology of Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) and not "Hinduo se Aazadi" as being widely claimed.
Umar Khalid also reacted to the video shared by Tajinder Singh Bagga and clarified, "Lies, brazen lies. Paid pipers of the regime are here to spread lies so that we get busy countering them. And lose focus from the ABVP violence against JNU students. Not happening, shithead. Find a better lie next time."
Some twitter users also came out and informed that, "The Mumbai police was in fact all around us, and maybe they need to look into wilful misinformation and an attempt to provoke violence by you, sir. Not a soul said ‘Hinduo se Aazadi’ and you are lying. Here are photos of the police from past night:"
Bollywood actress Konkona sen Sharma accused Mr. Bagga of sharing a doctored video. She replied to him on Twitter, "You are spreading lies! This is a doctored video! We were there and it was a peaceful protest which spoke of unity, not hate-mongering".
However, the video clip shared by Mr. Bagga is not doctored. It is just a low-quality video. In a low quality video, it is difficult to distinguish between phonetically similar words.
In conclusion, the claim that Umar Khalid chanted 'Hinduon se Azadi' slogan during the demonstration at Gateway of India is completely false.
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