A viral video on social media claims that several Muslims beat police officers in Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly over issuing of a challan. However, the video is actually from 2018 and the incident took place in Ghaziabad’s Loni, not Bareilly, as claimed.
CLAIM
The claim shared along with the video reads: “बरेली सिविल लाईन्स न्यूज पुलिस द्वारा चालान काटने पर मुसलमानो ने उनकी पिटाई की,जो कानून को चुनौती है,यह विडियो बताता है कि आगे हिन्दुस्तान मे क्या क्या होगा,कौन देश चलाएगा,सबका भविष्य क्या होगा,सच यह है कि देश को बाहर से ज्यादा अन्दर से ज्यादा खतरा है”
(Translated: Bareilly Civil Lines news... Muslims beat police over issuing of challan, which is a challenge to the law. This video shows what will happen in India, who will run the country, what will be the future of everyone? The truth is that the country faces more danger from inside than outside.)
The tweet shared by one Gagan Goyal had garnered 3,500 retweets at the time of writing the article.
Right-wing commentator, academic and journalist Madhu Kishwar also quote-tweeted a tweet that made the viral claim.
The video saw widespread presence on Facebook with the same claim.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We conducted a reverse image search on one of the key frames of the video and came across a recent tweet making the viral claim. The official Twitter handle of Bareilly Police replied to the tweet mentioning that the video is from Ghaziabad and the incident is nearly two years old.
Bareilly Police also stated that Ghaziabad police has already investigated the matter.
We then ran a keyword search on Google and found that news channel Aaj Tak had reported about the incident in August 2018.
Using advance Twitter search, we found that Ghaziabad Police had tweeted about the details of the incident on 27 August 2018. As per SSP Ghaziabad, the video is related to Loni border police station in Ghaziabad.
“A person had an argument with a bank employee and the employee called police officials. Some locals got into a physical fight with PRV officials. A case has been registered and two people have been arrested. The others seen in the video will also be arrested soon,” he added.
An article published by The Times of India on 28 August 2018 mentioned that the police said that a person identified as Imran had gone to State Bank of India’s Balram Nagar branch in Loni to get some details corrected in his Aadhaar card.
“But instead of standing in the queue, he went directly to the bank official. When the official objected to his behaviour and asked him to stand in the queue, he allegedly started creating a ruckus,” the report mentioned.
After getting into an argument with constable Anup, Imran, who was asked to leave the bank premises, came back with 10-15 people who allegedly got physical with the cop. “Relatives of Imran alleged he was beaten up by the constable during the argument, which led to the scuffle later,” TOI report stated.
Further, the claim that video is from Bareilly was also viral in 2018 and was fact-checked by Navbharat Times.
The article had carried a press note that mentioned the name of the accused as: Imran, Rashid, Mohammad Israel and Faeem.
The press note stated that the four people have been arrested and the search for other accused people was then underway.
Evidently, social media users revived a video of an incident which dates back to 2018 and falsely claimed that it’s from Uttar Pradesh’s Bareilly.
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