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No, Nepal Supreme Court has NOT banned loudspeakers in mosques

Recently, a claim about mosques in Nepal has been doing the rounds on social media. It alleges that Nepal’s Supreme Court banned loudspeakers in mosques. Twitter user Deepak Sharma’s tweet promoting the claim drew more than 9,500 retweets and was liked over 2,000 times at the time of writing. (Archive link)

A Twitter handle created in the name of Sadhvi Prachi, a BJP leader affiliated to the Vishwa Hindu Parishad, also made a similar claim in a tweet. We found three Twitter handles claiming to be the politician’s official account. None of these is verified accounts.

Kalpana Shrivastava, who describes herself as a lawyer, also tweeted this claim. (Archive link)

Facebook page ‘Hindu Rashtra Bharat‘ posted something similar and shared a few documents.

This claim is gathering a lot of traction on Twitter and Facebook.

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Fact-check

We could not find any media reports to corroborate the viral claim. We also searched the Supreme Court of Nepal’s website and found no such information there either.

Alt News reached out to South Asia Check editor Deepak Adhikari who said that the court’s decision has been wrongly presented. The Supreme Court of Nepal ruled to keep the volume of mosque loudspeakers low, not ban them altogether.

Deepak Adhikari also contacted Nepal Supreme Court spokesman Bhadrakali Pokharel on our behalf. “This is a temporary stay order. The judge gave this decision while hearing on a petition. He made a decision to keep the sound of loudspeakers in mosques low. They have not banned loudspeakers. The court gave this order on November 29. The next hearing on this petition was given on December 10. The defence did not appear and the hearing was cancelled,” Pokharel informed. Adhikari told us that the matter is still in court.

The documents shared on Facebook were from the November 29 hearing.

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India Today and Dainik Bhaskar have also published fact-check reports on the viral claim.

Therefore, the Supreme Court of Nepal had decided to lower the volume of mosque loudspeakers. The matter which is still in court was altered on Indian social media. False claims suggested that the Nepalese Supreme Court banned loudspeakers in mosques.

[Note: This article will be updated as the case progresses in court.]

This post was originally published on Radio Free.