Unpicking the web of misinformation around the Leicester disorder
A day later, Leicestershire Police issued a statement after investigating and stated that "the incident did not take place". Majid Freeman deleted his posts and said the attempted abduction had not happened and that his initial version had been based on conversation with the family making the allegation.
Many in Leicester have said the roots of the tension go back much further. A swathe of media reports have focused on an incident in Leicester following a dramatic victory for India over Pakistan in cricket's Asia Cup in Dubai on 28 August. The video itself does not show much - it is grainy and black-and-white and shows a group of men running down a street before an altercation happens. It's hard to decipher who these men were and what their specific backgrounds are.
These three incidents are not the only episodes to have prompted flurries of social media activity but they remain the most cited in the run-up to the major disorder on 17 and 18 September. The BBC examined the top 30 URLs that were shared using these hashtags. Of them, 11 were links to articles written by news website OpIndia.com, which describes itself as "bringing the right side of India to you". As well as potentially inauthentic accounts, these articles were also widely shared by genuine accounts including some with hundreds of thousands of followers.
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