Video of crowd gathered at Pope's ceremony in East Timor falsely shared in name of Mumbai on social media

New Delhi: A video showing a large crowd at a rally was recently shared on social media, claiming that it was from a rally organised by AIMIM leader Imtiaz Jaleel against Mahant Ramgiri Maharaj and BJP MLA Nitesh Rane.

PTI’s Fact Check investigation revealed that the video was actually from a ceremony held by Pope Francis in East Timor and had no connection with a rally organised by the AIMIM leader in Mumbai.

A Facebook user wrote, "Imtiaz Jaleel Sahab and the entire Ashiq-e-Rasool procession entered Mumbai..."

Another user on social media platform 'X' (formerly Twitter) wrote, "This is not Pakistan or Bangladesh, nor is it Iraq, Iran, or Afghanistan; this is our Mumbai, where Muslims are coming out in force to show their strength. Keep sleeping, Hindus."

Both these claims were shared on social media.

To verify the truth, the Fact Check Desk performed a reverse search of keyframes from the video. The investigation revealed that the video is from East Timor, where a large crowd had gathered for a ceremony with Christian religious leader Pope Francis.

The video was posted on the Facebook page 'Nigerian Catholics' on September 12 with the caption "Historic Welcome of Pope Francis in East Timor".

Additionally, we found references to Pope’s visit to East Timor on websites like ‘The Conversation’ and news agency Associated Press (AP), which reported that about 600,000 people attended the event.

During the investigation, we also found a live broadcast of the Pope’s ceremony on the Facebook page TVET Entertainment Ofisiál.

According to media reports, the AIMIM leader did indeed organise a rally on September 23 in Maharashtra against the alleged controversial statements made by BJP MLA Rane and Mahant Ramgiri Maharaj.

Thousands of people participated in that rally, but the viral video was not from that event.

PTI Fact Check Desk found in its investigation that the viral video was not of the crowd gathered for a rally in Mumbai organised by the AIMIM leader, but instead shows the crowd from Pope Francis’ ceremony in East Timor.