A disturbing video showing a group of men molesting and groping two women on a dirt road in Uttar Pradesh in 2017, has been revived on social media with a false claim that the incident took place in West Bengal and that the perpetrators are Rohingyas.
BOOM found that the claim is false as the incident in the video took place in May 2017 in Uttar Pradesh's Rampur district. We wrote about the video in 2020 when it went viral claiming it was a recent incident.
The one-minute-long video shows the two women pleading with the perpetrators to let them go even as the sexual harassment is captured on camera.
A Twitter user shared the clip falsely claiming it was from West Bengal.
“This is the State of Affairs of Hindu Girls in West Bengal where Mamata Banerjee is the Chief Minister. No law and Order. Rohingyas are Involved. Please Forward this Video to Maximum number of People so that it can Reach our Home Minister Amit Shahji @AmitShah,” (sic) he wrote.
Fact Check
BOOM debunked the same video in July 2020, when it was revived and shared as a recent incident.
A reverse search on keyframes led us to an NDTV report published on May 29, 2017 which was titled as 'In UP, 14 Men Molest 2 Women. They Make A Video And Post It Online.’
The report stated that a group of 14 men molested two women near a village under the Tanda police station. The video was filmed by one of the accused on their mobile phones and they decided to circulate it on social media later.
According to the Firstpost report published on May 29, neither the victims nor their families came forward to lodge a complaint against the perpetrators and eventually the police launched an FIR themselves. All 14 men who were involved and seen in the video were identified soon the police nabbed Shah Nawaz, the main accused who filmed the incident on his cell phone.
Later, ten of the accused were arrested, who were sent to jail at that time after being produced before Chief Judicial Magistrate Pramod Kumar on May 31.
The incident was also reported by Mid Day at that time.
Here is a following comparison of the news bulletin and the viral video.