As anxious relatives scramble from one hospital to another to identify their loved ones who perished in the monstrous triple-train collision in Balasore district of Odisha leaving 275 dead and over 1000 injured, certain social media users tried to project it as a communal angle to the incident.
An aerial view image of the accident began to gain momentum as certain social media users pointed out a white building located near the accident site, falsely labelling it as a mosque.
A verified Twitter handle called The Random Indian posted an image showing the derailed coaches and an arrow directed towards a nearby white structure nearby accompanied with words, “Just Saying… Yesterday Was Friday”.
The tweet has now been deleted after fact checker and Alt News co-founder Mohammed Zubair called out the claim as false.
However, when this article was written, the tweet had garnered 4.2 million views and retweeted 4,592 times. On Facebook, several posts with the same content went viral, fuelling the idea of Muslims having a hand in the accident.
Here is a screenshot which Alt News took.
A fact check conducted by the Alt News, which also included verification by a journalist on-site of the accident, confirmed that the white structure shown in the posts was not a mosque but an under-construction ISKCON temple in Bahanaga.
Alt News uploaded several videos and images, which included a video showing the temple entrance and a red board indicating it belongs to ISKCON. It also shows a five-month-old video of the temple, which was posted on youtube.
Here is the link.
Alt News added it had reached out to the temple authorities who confirmed the accident occurred near the temple and the white structure in the viral images was theirs.
Smashing the claims as baseless, it said it was absurd to say that the proximity of the structure had anything to do with the accident.
But the damage was done. Believing the claim, several social media users shared the image extensively.
Many tagged Prime Minister Narendra Modi, Prime Minister’s Office and other government Twitter handles requesting them to “demolish all mosques that were in close proximity to the railway lines.”
In a tweet put up, the Odisha police on Sunday asked citizens to refrain from using any such images.
“It has come to notice that some social media handles are mischievously giving communal colour to the tragic train accident at Balasore. This is highly unfortunate. Investigation by the GRP, Odisha into the cause and all other aspects of the accident is going on,” the Odisha Police tweeted.
Latest on Odisha train accident
The Odisha government on Sunday revised the triple train accident’s death toll to 275 from 288, and put the number of injuries at 1,175.
Indian Railways Minister Ashwini Vaishnaw, while speaking to reporters said that the Railway Board has recommended a CBI investigation into the accident.
Indian Railways said that even ticketless travellers on board the passenger trains will also receive compensation. This is in line with a Supreme Court order, officials said. “Irrespective of the passengers being ticketless (or not), they will receive compensation,” railway spokesperson Amitabh Sharma said.
An Indian Railways senior member said that indigenously-developed automatic train protection system “Kavach,” which was not installed on the route where the accident in Odisha’s Balasore occurred on Friday evening, could not have prevented it.
According to the official, Kavach would not have prevented such an accident as there are certain incidents that no technology in the world can avert, citing the example of boulders suddenly falling in front of vehicles to illustrate her point.
