On June 26, Lucknow police arrested a man named Salahuddin and recovered some weapons, cartridges and equipment used to make illegal weapons. Soon after that, news outlets published reports that 300 illegal firearms and 20 sacks of a total of 50,000 cartridges were recovered from the house of the accused just before Muharram. This was also amplified by social media users, some of whom claimed that the police recovered as many as 3,000 guns.
On its English website, Dainik Bhaskar reported that Lucknow police raided an illegal arms factory ahead of Muharram and seized 300 illegal weapons and 50,000 cartridges. (Archive)
OpIndia, which has been called for publishing misinformation and propaganda as news, also reported that a day before Muharram, the police recovered 300 firearms and 50,000 cartridges from the home of a man named Hakim Salahuddin in Lucknow. (Archive)
X user @MrSinha_, whose posts have been fact checked by Alt News several times, posted a picture, allegedly showing the accused standing with cops and recovered arms. "3000+ guns isn't a small number, it's enough to arm a small army and capture an entire city... Why did Md. Salauddin have them? What was he up to? Planning something big?" he posted. (Archived link)
Other X users, such as @SaffronChargers, @JaipurDialogues and Sudarshan News' @KumaarSaagar also shared similar claims of 3,000 guns and 50,000 cartridges being recovered from Hakim Salahuddin's house in Lucknow with with an image of a large cache of guns. "Were they preparing for Ghazwa-e-Hind (war against India)?" the users wrote. The image and claim was also shared by Harshvardhan Singh, state general secretary of BJP's youth wing from Uttar Pradesh.
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Fact Check
Alt News perused through posts on the Lucknow police's X handle for more information and found a police statement on this case shared on June 27. In a video, police officer Gopal Krishna Chaudhary says that on June 26 joint team of the Malihabad and Rahimabad police stations of Lucknow arrested 68-year-old Salahuddin alias Lala for making and selling illegal weapons in the Mirzaganj area of Malihabad.
He briefed that they recovered three .32 bore pistols, one .315 bore country pistol, two .22 bore country pistols, one .22 bore rifle, seven air guns, about 140 cartridges of different bore sizes, some empty shells, other weapons including knives, hooks and saws, and deer hide from the accused.
Thus number of firearms recovered is nowhere close to 300 or 3,000 guns and 50,000 cartridges. The number of pistols, rifles and air guns seized by the police was altogether 14 and the number of cartridges recovered was around 140.
To sum up, news outlets Dainik Bhaskar and OpIndia as well as many social media users spread misleading and exaggerated claims about the number of actual arms recovered in this case and tried to add a communal angle to the incident by linking it to Muharram.
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