A disturbing video showing a man assaulting a minor girl in the middle of a street, has surfaced on social media with captions falsely giving it a communal spin and claiming that a Hindu was attacked in Chhattisgarh's Raipur.
BOOM spoke to Raipur's Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prashant Agrawal who confirmed that there is no communal angle to the incident. Further, we were also able to confirm that both the victim and the perpetrator are from the same community.
In the 10-seconds-long viral clip, a man can be seen dragging a girl by her hair in a busy road and carrying a sharp-edged weapon in the other hand. In the video, the minor girl is seen bleeding and her clothes are stained with blood after the attack.
The clip is being shared with a caption , "This brute who is walking on the road after attacking the girl. I am more angry than seeing the dead people standing there. Raipur, This spectacle continued for one & a half hours & the Chhattisgarh police were sleeping? Hindus Under Attack". Communal hashtags have been used in the caption to amplify the fake claim.
The video is graphic in nature. Viewers discretion is advised.
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Fact Check
BOOM ran a related keyword search on YouTube taking a cue from the caption and found an NDTV news bulletin carrying the same video uploaded on February 20, 2023.
The video description with the report states, "A 16-year-old girl was attacked with a knife and dragged by her hair on a road by a man she had refused to marry, in Chhattisgarh capital Raipur. The 47-year-old attacker has been arrested, the police said on Sunday. A video shows the man, Omkar Tiwari, dragging the badly wounded teen by her hair, holding in his other hand the knife he had stabbed her with late on Saturday evening. When the video emerged on a social media platform, the police launched an investigation."
We also found a The Times of India article from February 19 reporting about the same incident.
The report says, "A few days back, the girl had quit the job from Omkar's shop. Reportedly there was a dispute between the two regarding the transaction of money. On Saturday night, the dispute turned ugly when Omkar entered with the weapon. The girl was beaten up for opposing the accused's misbehavior with her family."
The article also mentioned that the girl is currently under treatment in a hospital as she suffered deep wounds and severe blood loss due to the attack.
BOOM then reached out to Raipur's Senior Superintendent of Police (SSP) Prashant Agrawal for further information regarding the incident. Agrawal sent us a press release about the incident mentioning that the girl's brother filed a complaint in Gudhiyari police station after Tiwari stabbed his sister with a knife.
When asked, Agrawal said that there is no communal angle to the incident.