Old Clip of Mob Chasing Police In West Bengal Peddled With False Communal Spin
This video is from West Bengal dates back to 2020 at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic and is not recent.
advertisement
A video showing several people running in a direction is being shared as one from West Bengal.
(Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
Is the claim true?: No, the claim is false.
Although, the video is from West Bengal, it is not related to the recent violence in the state.
This video dates back to 2020 when a mob defied COVID-19 norms and attacked police personnel in Howrah.
What we found: We divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
We came across the same video on news agency Asian News International (ANI)'s official X page from 28 April 2020.
The agency reported that a gathering at a market in Howrah ignored the COVID-19 lockdown's rules , assaulted police officers, and threw stones when they were urged to disperse. This left two police personnel wounded.
Similarly, the Scroll and the Times of India also reported on this incident in April 2020.
The West Bengal police also commented on this matter and noted that the perpetrators would identified & brought to justice. They reiterated that no transgression of the law anywhere would be tolerated.
Conclusion: This video from 2020 has gone viral to falsely claim that it shows a Muslim mob chased down law enforcement personnel in West Bengal, recently.
(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , or e-mail it to us at webqoof@thequint.com and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)