No, This Not a Video of ‘RSS Goondas’ Beating up Dalits

Video circulated on Facebook claiming to show Dalit men being beaten for saying Jai Bhim are a misleading.

The same video is being shared on Facebook with the same false narrative but from Gujarat.

(Photo: BOOM/Altered by The Quint)

A video of plain-clothes policemen parading and thrashing few men in public which had gone viral on WhatsApp last week has now surfaced on Facebook with a false narrative and a communal twist – “RSS thugs beating Dalit men for saying Jai Bhim while the police looked on.”

BOOM’s story on 5 September 2018 had revealed that the video is from Talaja town in Bhavnagar, Gujarat and the men who are being beaten by the police are gangsters.

The video was posted by Facebook pages Bhim Sena on 5 September and Jai Bhim India on 6 September 2018. The caption says “#तिमलनाडुम 3 #दिलतों को #RSS के #गडंुोंने#पीटा #पिुलस #तमाशबीन बनी रहेइनका #कसरू बस इतना था इस #होटल #मािलक को इहोनं े#जयभीम बोल िदया था”

This translates to

“3 Dalit men were beaten by RSS thugs in Tamil Nadu while the police remained as spectators. The only fault of these men was that they said Jai Bhim to this hotel owner.”

Bhim Sena’s post, which has now been restricted by Facebook due to graphic content has received around 5,100 shares and more than one lakh views at the time of writing this story.

The same video is being shared on Facebook with the same false narrative but here it is claimed to be from Gujarat.

The Truth About the Video

BOOM’s verification had revealed that one of the three men in the video is Shailesh Dhandhaliya, a notorious gangster from Bhavnagar who is a history-sheeter with cases registered against him for extortion, robbery and kidnapping. The plain-clothes policeman in the video beating the accused with a laathi is Deepak Mishra, police inspector, Crime Branch, Bhavnagar.

BOOM spoke to Mishra, who said that he had paraded the accused to ‘rid the public of fear’. Gangster Dhandhaliya had served a jail term of 10 years but was arrested again for another crime. When we pointed out to Mishra that parading an accused publicly is against the law and the men’s hands were tied up while they were beaten, he said that it was done for the public and to teach the gangsters a lesson. He said that the accused were showing the police where they had stored weapons.

Click here to read BOOM’s earlier story.

(This article was originally published on BOOM, and has been republished here with permission.)