Fact Check: Hyderabad divided into rich Hindu and poor Muslim areas? No, viral posts are misleading
A viral post claims to show the economic disparity between Hindu and Muslim areas in Hyderabad through two images.
By K Sherly Sharon Published on 23 Jan 2025 1:05 PM IST
Claim: The images show underdeveloped slum settlements of Muslims and rich residential areas of Hindus in Hyderabad.
Fact: The claim is false. One image shows the Dharavi area in Mumbai and the second is an office complex in Hi-Tech city, Hyderabad.
Hyderabad: An image of an underdeveloped area and another image of high-rise buildings is going viral on social media with the claim that they show Muslim and Hindu localities in Hyderabad, respectively.
The post insinuates that the slum area in the picture is the settlements of Muslims who speak Urdu and the high-rise buildings belong to Hindus who speak Telugu. The post has garnered over 5,00,000 views and 6,000 likes on X (formerly Twitter).
The images were shared on X with the caption, āBhagyanagar (Hyderabad): Muslim (Urdu) Area (and) Hindu (Telugu) Area.ā (Archive)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the claim is false. The first image shows a slum area from Dharavi, Mumbai and the second image is from Hyderabad's Hi-Tech city.
First image
Using a reverse image search, we found that the image captioned as āMuslim (Urdu) Areaā is from Dharavi, Mumbai. The image has been used as a feature image in many news reports including CBC in 2013, FirstPost in 2020, The Times of India in 2022 and The Economic Times in 2022.
The CBC report, posted on March 22, 2013, credited the viral picture to Rafiq Maqbool, a staff photographer at the Associated Press.
We found that Alamy, a stock photography agency, lists the image on its website with Photography credits to Rafiq Maqbool. The details of the image show the "Date Taken" as 27 October 2010 and the caption states, "This Oct. 27, 2010 photo shows the Dharavi slum in Mumbai, India.".
The viral image was also captured from other angles. A report by LiveMint about Dharavi uses an image by HT_PRINT as its feature image. The buildings in the background of the viral image can be seen in this image too. You can find a comparison of both images below.
Second image
The image of the high-rise buildings shows the Hi-Tech city of Hyderabad.
We traced the image to an X post by Hi Hyderabad, posted on April 22, 2022. The image capture was credited to @laxman_travel in the post. (Archive)
We used google maps to find the exact location of the buildings. The three buildings seen in the foreground are the Skyview 10, Skyview 20 and Twitza. These are commercial properties where people of all religions work.
Therefore, NewsMeter found that the claim is false.
