Video of Indian Islamic scholar's funeral falsely shared as Atiq Ahmed's son Asad's funeral

By: Praveen Kumar
April 18 2023

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Context

On April 13, 2023, gangster-politician Atiq Ahmed’s son Asad Ahmed and his aide Ghulam Hussain were killed in a police encounter by the state police in India’s most populated state of Uttar Pradesh(UP). They were both wanted in connection with the February 2023 murder case of Umesh Pal, a witness in a 2005 high-profile murder in UP. According to India Today, Atiq Ahmed was shifted from Gujarat’s Sabarmati Central Jail to Naini Central Jail in Prayagraj on March 27. His request for permission to attend his son’s funeral, to be held on April 15, was not granted. On the night of April 15, two days after his son’s death in Jhansi, three men posing as journalists opened fire and shot dead Atiq Ahmed and his brother Ashraf when they were being taken for a routine medical check-up. They surrendered immediately after and were arrested by the police.

Following these events, over the weekend, a 30-second-long video in which thousands of people can be seen surrounding a body covered in a white cloth being carried away during nighttime was circulated on social media, claiming to show the funeral of Asad Ahmed.  

In Fact

We conducted a reverse image search on the keyframes of the viral video and found the original clip on YouTube. The channel 'Shan Islamic studio' uploaded it to the platform on April 14, a day prior to Asad's funeral. The video is titled “The scene of carrying the funeral of Hazrat Maulana Syed Muhammad Rabi Hosni Nadvi may Allah have mercy on him” in Urdu. Hindustan Times reported that Maulana Rabe Hasni Nadvi was the president of the All India Muslim Personal Law Board (AIMPLB), and he died at the Lucknow-based Islamic Educational Institute Nadwatul Ulama (Nadwa) around 3:30 p.m. on April 13, after a prolonged illness.

The original video is four minutes and thirty seconds long and has better resolution than the viral video. To confirm the location featured in this video, we observed the buildings visible throughout the video. We found the exact match by looking for the street view of Lucknow’s Darul Uloom Nadwatul Ulama. The part including the viral clip can be observed from the 2:12 mark in the full video.

We also searched for videos of Asad Ahmed’s funeral and found that The Indian Express published one such video on YouTube, titled “Asad Ahmed Funeral: Last Rites Of Atiq Ahmed’s Son Asad Conducted At Prayagraj Cemetery,” on April 15. The video description says that the last rites of Asad Ahmed were “conducted at Prayagraj's Kasari Masari graveyard on April 15.” Contrary to the scenes in the viral video, fewer people and many police personnel can be seen at Asad’s funeral, which we also noted was carried out during the day, not after nightfall.

The Verdict

A video of a large gathering of people at the funeral of religious leader Moulana Rabe Hasni Nadvi has been misattributed to the funeral ceremony of Asad Ahmed, who was shot dead in a police encounter in Uttar Pradesh recently. Both events took place at different places in Uttar Pradesh. Therefore, we mark this claim false.