A video showing two girls, one in a hijab and one without, being yelled at by a man is being shared with a "love jihad" angle – a conspiracy theory propagated by the right-wing Hindutva groups that claims Muslim men lure Hindu women with love, marriage or sexual advances to convert them to Islam.
What have the users said?: Users claimed that the girl in the burqa allegedly brainwashed the supposed Hindu girl. She was "caught" asking the Hindu girl to wear a burqa and be in a relationship with a boy from the Muslim community.
An archive of the post can be found here.
(Source: X/Screenshot)
This post recorded 87.8K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)
Is there a love jihad angle?: No, the claim is false.
The incident happened in 2021 in Somwarpet, Karnataka, and the altercation took place when the two Muslim girls were taking back their own burqas from their friend after having given them to her for safekeeping as they were not allowed to wear them to the classroom.
How did we find out?: At first, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.
We came across a similar video by an X user, @abdulsadiq949 from 19 November 2021.
It was uploaded with the caption, "Somwarpet (Kodagu) is now turning into a terror hub for the Sangh Parivar. This is the 3rd incident that took place today, and the most horrifying is that 2 Muslim students were assaulted by Sangh Parivar goons after making a video of them for giving a burqa to a Hindu friend." (translated from Kannada to English using Google Translate.)
The frames in the viral video matched with the older version from 2021.
Here is a comparison between the two.
(Source: Altered by The Quint)
With a relevant keyword search, we came across news reports by Kannada Prabha, The News Minute and The New Indian Express from 2021.
Kannada Prabha reported that a group of over 40 individuals assaulted two female students from Sacred Heart School. The father of one of the victims stated that his daughter and her friend were physically attacked by boys associated with the Sangh Parivar.
What unfolded?: The victim had attended her college classes, where she was required to remove the burqa before entering the classrooms.
Consequently, she took off her burqa and gave it to a Christian girl from the same college in the morning.
However, the Christian girl did not attend college that day, so the victim's friend waited near the college in the evening to return the burqa.
Unfortunately, while returning the burqa, both the victim and her friend were attacked by a large group of more than 40 individuals. The father also mentioned that the girls were locked up, beaten, insulted, and assaulted.
Police Action: TNM and The New Indian Express noted that the accused have been booked under the POCSO Act and two arrests of Prajwal and Kaushik had been made by the police.
The Quint has reached out to the local police as well to get a confirmation and the story will be updated when the response comes.
Conclusion: It is clear that an old video is being shared on social media platforms and has been given a false communal narrative.
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