A video which shows police sirens blaring in the background and a man recording a selfie video seemingly mocking the situation, thereby issuing a threat, is being shared on social media linking it to the violence in Karauli, Rajasthan, that happened on 2 April during the celebration of Hindu New Year.
The incident happened when a bike rally was passing through a Muslim-dominated market area and it was met with stone-pelting which snowballed into arson and violence, injuring over two dozen people.
However, we found that the video in question is from Nizamabad, Telangana. Speaking to The Quint, Nizamabad Commissioner of Police KR Nagaraju said that the video was from 2019 and a case was registered against the accused back then.
CLAIM
In the video, the man wearing a red headscarf and white shirt can be heard saying, "See, you can see four cars in our area in front of STAR hotel. Even if we do something small, people create a scene. This much of fear is enough. Hope you have understood."
An archive of the post can be seen here.
(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)
WHAT WE FOUND
We conducted a keyword search on Facebook and found the same video posted on a Facebook page in 2020, along with the hashtag 'Hyderabad'.
The video is from 2020.
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
The man states that he is standing infront of the 'Star Hotel'. Combining these two inputs, we did a keyword search and found the hotel on Justdial, a search aggregator that provides information related to businesses to users.
In the viral video, from 0:08 to 0:13 sec, we noticed the hotel banner, which matched with the photo on Justdial.
Screengrab from viral video (L), Screengrab from Justdial (R).
(Photo: Altered by The Quint)
We then contacted Suhail Khan, the owner of the place, who confirmed to us that the video was shot near his hotel.
Further, we reached out to Nizamabad Commissioner of Police KR Nagaraju, who confirmed to The Quint that the video is from 2019 and said that an FIR was registered under Section 107 of Code of Criminal Procedure (CrPc) (security for maintaining peace) against the person identified as Mohammed Afzal.
We also accessed the FIR copy, registered on 22 April 2019, which mentioned that the incident happened at STAR hotel near the railway station.
Meanwhile, Rajasthan police, in a tweet posted on 6 April, said that the incident is not from Rajasthan and had taken place in Nizamabad.
An archive of the tweet can be seen here.
(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)
Clearly, a video from Telanagana is being shared on social media with the false claim that it is from Karauli.
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