(The story has been updated and republished from The Quint's archives in the light of the video resurfacing with a different claim. The story was originally published on 26 March, 2019.)
CLAIM
A video of police lathi-charging some people has gone viral on social media, with the narrative that those being baton-charged are unemployment youth who were protesting outside the residence of chief minister. It doesn’t mention the name of any one state or chief minister, but multiple ministers.
Some social media users claimed that the protest was outside Uttar Pradesh’s chief minister, while others claimed that it was from Madhya Pradesh Chief Minister Kamal Nath’s house.
The one minute clip shows police hitting and dispersing a large group of people.
The claim along with the video reads: “मुख्यमन्त्री निवास के बहार धरना दे रहे बेरोज़गार युवकों को मिली सौग़ात !!! आज सुबह सभी बेरोज़गार युवकों को नौकरी का ज्वाइन लेटर हाथो हाथ दिया गया” (Translated: Outside chief minister’s house, unemployed youth who were protesting got what they wanted. Today morning, unemployed youth received joining letters for their jobs)
TRUE OR FALSE?
Using the software Invid, The Quint broke down the video into individual keyframes. On running a search for the images on the search engine Yandex, we came across a reference to SSP Aligarh.
Picking up from there, we ran a Google search for news reports with the keywords ‘SSP aligarh lathicharge’. The first report that showed up was a The Times of India report dated 12 June 2018, which talked about how the Aligarh police had resorted to a lathi-charge to disperse Hindu Jagran Manch activists who had forcibly locked the gate of the SSP’s office.
The photo in the article also matched with the video in question.
On running a search on Twitter with the phrase ‘Aligarh police baton charge’, we came across an ANI UP tweet which had a video of the same incident.
The Indian Express also carried a news report on about the same incident on 13 June 2018 and said that ten members of the Hindu Jagran Manch had been injured in the lathi-charge, according to a member.
Therefore, it is clearly an old video of a completely different incident and is being shared out of context with a different narrative.
PAK HANDLES HAD EARLIER SHARED THE VIDEO WITH A DIFFERENT CLAIM
In March, the same video was viral with claim that those being baton charged are Muslims who had been praying in a mosque.
Several Pakistanis on Twitter had then shared this video with the same narrative, condemning the Indian police for their actions against the Muslims.
The video clip was originally shared on 24 March by a Javaid Shaikh on Twitter. While the tweet was deleted, Alt News had archived it, from where we had taken a screenshot.
Pakistani journalist Sabena Siddiqi replied to this video, saying ‘Terrible’.
Many other people also shared the video, saying minorities are not safe in India.
A news outlet called EHA News had also shared the video, stating that far right Hindu attacks on the Muslim population are on the rise.
The video was uploaded on YouTube on 24 March with the same narrative.
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