Were Schoolgirls in Patna Made To Dance to a Bollywood Song? No, Video Is Edited

The video has been edited to add a Bollywood song to the audio track.

A video showing schoolgirls from a government school in Patna, Bihar dancing to a Bollywood song, while male guests are seated is being widely shared on social media.

The claim: Those sharing this clip have criticised the act, asking whether it was "a school or a dance bar?"

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No, the video is an edited one.

• The original video carries audio with a song about empowering girls, and not Bollywood music, as claimed.

How did we find out the truth?: A reverse image search on a screenshot of the video led us to an Instagram post which carried the same claim and audio.

• However, the post also mentioned that the 'guest' in the video was one Sanjeev Kumar, an MLC election hopeful from the Patna Teachers' Constituency.

• Taking a cue from this, we used his name as keyword along with 'Patna schoolgirls dance', to look for more information.

• One of the results for this search was another Instagram post, shared by 'blazenews.media', which carried different audio.

• This video did not carry Bollywood music, and had a different song playing while the students performed.

View this post on Instagram

We were able to identify the song as one called 'Beti Hu Mai Beti', which is a Hindi song about empowering daughters.

• One can hear different versions of this song — all of which show girls performing to it — here, here, and here.

• We went through Kumar's Facebook page, where we found a video of the same event, shared on 10 September.

• This post, too, carried the Hindi song as the audio track, and not a Bollywood song, as claimed.

Addressing the misinformation in a post shared on 17 September, Kumar said that the video was "deeply shocked and saddened" him, adding that "dragging schoolgirls into a political dispute is unjustifiable by any standard."

"It is extremely unfortunate that the dignity of girls aged around 12–13—and the event they were participating in—has been exploited in this manner. I had attended a school cultural program where girls were performing a song centered on women's empowerment," his post noted.

Conclusion: An edited video is being shared to falsely claim that schoolgirls were made to dance to a Bollywood song on school premises.

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