On 13 April 2026, as a wage protest by tens of thousands of Noida factory workers turned violent, posts on X claimed police had opened fire and killed 14 workers. The claim is false: no deaths were reported, police denied firing, and the two accounts behind it were booked.
Claim: Police fired on protesting workers in Noida and 14 of them died.
Said by: The X handles @Proudindianavi and @Mir_Ilyas_INC, which police later said traced to Pakistan through VPNs.
What the record shows: No firing deaths were reported. BOOM debunked the claim, and police named both handles in an FIR at the Sector 20 police station. Decode
Where the claim came from
On 9 April 2026 Haryana raised minimum wages by 35%. Unskilled workers in Noida earned about ₹435 a day against Haryana's revised ₹585, and walkouts spread through Noida's industrial belt. Decode On 13 April the protests turned into stone-pelting, arson and tear gas.
That day, two X accounts, @Proudindianavi and @Mir_Ilyas_INC, posted that police had fired on the workers and 14 had died. Decode did not report how far the posts spread. Decode
What the evidence shows
Documented No deaths were reported in the Noida unrest. Decode's reconstruction records stone-pelting in Sector 121, arson in Phase 2 and FIRs filed by factory managements, but no fatalities. It notes that BOOM fact-checked and debunked the 14-deaths claim. Decode
Police account Police said they used tear gas and "minimal force" and denied social media claims that they had fired on workers. Al Jazeera No protester or worker group has reported any death from firing.
The Pakistan claim about the handles
Claim · Police Commissioner Laxmi Singh On 15 April the Gautam Buddh Nagar Police Commissioner said "technical analysis of data obtained from X" traced both accounts to Pakistan, that they were run through VPNs and that they had been active for three months before the protests. Decode
She did not say what data was used, and X did not comment. Decode noted that a VPN routes traffic through a server elsewhere, so logs may show the server's location rather than the user's. The attribution therefore remains a police claim. What is established is that the "14 deaths" posts were false. Decode
Context
On 14 April Uttar Pradesh raised minimum wages, lifting unskilled pay to ₹13,690 a month, while workers had sought ₹20,000. Decode Police arrested about 300 people within a day and called the unrest a conspiracy. UP Labour Minister Anil Rajbhar alleged a possible Pakistan link without citing evidence. The Week The full account is on our Noida wage protest page.
Questions people ask
Did anyone die in the Noida workers' protest?
No deaths were reported. The claim that police killed 14 workers was debunked by BOOM, according to Decode.
Did Noida police fire on workers?
Police said they used tear gas and "minimal force" and denied firing. No evidence of police firing has been published.
Were the fake posts from Pakistan?
Police say so, but did not show their analysis. Because the accounts used VPNs, an IP trace alone may not show where the users were.
