A 2017 image of Sikhs helping the poor and needy linked to ongoing migrant crisis
A viral image of several people from the Sikh community helping people who are claimed to be migrants by applying medicine to them. Claims are that the people injured in the viral image are migrants who have become tired of walking to their original home due to the ongoing pandemic situation.
Most of the captions read,”Sikhs who apply some medicine to the wounded legs of migrant labourers who are walking and walking through the relentless highways towards their original homes…There can never be an ideal religion beyond humanism; beyond love and care for fellow human beings.My respects for these great people..”
This viral image was also tweeted by Harsh Goenka, Chairman of the RPG Group. His tweet was liked 4.9 thousand times and was captioned, “Sikhs are applying balm to the tired and wounded legs of migrants who are walking miles and miles to their distant homes. This is true humanity, true ‘seva’. My respect to these great people…..”
A Facebook profile called Balakrishnan R posted the image and garnered around 20 thousand shares and over 3 thousand likes. His post was later taken down but is archived here.
Several others have also posted the same image with a similar caption in Facebook.
Truth
The claim is false. The original image is the Sikh community serving the needy and poor outside a Gurudwara in Delhi is old. The same image can be seen tweeted on December 3 2017 by a verified account named ‘Harjinder Singh Kukreja’.
Bollywood actors like Rishi Kapoor and Ayushmann Khurrana also retweeted the tweet by Harjinder Singh Kukreja in 2017. Apart from this several news websites like Mirror Now and PTC News reported about this incident in December 2017.
Therefore, the image is not related to the ongoing migrant crisis but is of 2017.
