The false claim surfaced when former Indian lawmaker Imtiaz Jaleel led a convoy of hundreds of vehicles to Mumbai and called for the arrest of BJP politician Nitesh Rane and Hindu preacher Ramgiri Maharaj for “inflammatory comments” about Muslims, according to local media (archived link ) .
The demonstrators were denied entry into the city and returned after presenting their demands to government representatives.
The clip was shared here and here with similar false claims elsewhere on X and Facebook.
But the claim is incorrect. The video was filmed during Pope Francis’ visit to East Timor.
East Timor images
A reverse image search of the footage on Google found a higher quality version posted to TikTok by an account called “rey.marques” on September 11, 2024. It was viewed more than two million times (archived link).
Hashtags in the caption suggested it was filmed during the Pope’s visit to East Timor.
The Pope celebrated Mass for hundreds of thousands of faithful in the small Southeast Asian country on September 10 (archived link).
About 600,000 people out of a population of 1.3 million attended the Mass, the Vatican said in a statement, citing local authorities.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the clip shared in Fake Posts (left) and the TikTok footage (right):
The images show the flag of East Timor on street lights and a poster of the Pope.
AFP previously debunked another false claim in the Philippines that shared the same video.
Rey Marques, a photographer from the capital Dili who owns the TikTok account, told AFP at the time that he did not know who filmed the video but identified the scene as near the city’s Raikotu General Cemetery.
AFP confirmed the location of the images by comparing them with Google Street View images from the area (archived link).
Below is a screenshot comparison highlighting a house, street and tree in the TikTok video (left) and its associated elements on Google Street View (right):
A livestream on the Facebook page of local media outlet TVET Entertainment shows a similar scene of crowds following Mass (archived link).
