A video showing police personnels thrashing a group of protestors is circulating with a false claim that the incident took place in Haryana's Mewat area when rioters tried to disrupt the peace.
BOOM found that the video shows a protest by the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) workers that took place in Patna on July 13 this year alleging widespread corruption in the state's recruitment of teachers.
Massive communal clashes took place in Haryana's Nuh area, that claimed at least six lives and left several injured and displaced. The violence, as per police, began after a group of people obstructed pro-Hindu organisation Vishwa Hindu Parishad's 'Brij Mandal Jalabhishek Yatra' near Khedla Mod in Nuh, and pelted stones at the religious procession. A large number of vehicles were torched, houses and shops were vandalised during the clashes.
The video is being shared against this backdrop, with a Hindi caption which translates to, "Here, the policemen have given a good prasad to those who created riots in Mewat."
(Original Text in Hindi: ये लो पुलिस वालों ने बढ़िया प्रसाद दें दिया मेवात में दंगा कराने वालों को।)
Click here to view the post.
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The video is also circulating with a caption in Tamil that makes a similar claim. The claim in Tamil translates to, "*This happened yesterday in Haryana. A group of religious Sanghis told Muslims to vacate their homes. But for the first time the army did its duty properly.*"
(Original Text in Tamil: *இது நேற்று ஹரியானாவில் நடந்தது. முஸ்லிம்கள் வீடுகளைக் காலிசெய்து போய்விடுங்கள் என மதவாத சங்கிகள் கூட்டம் கூறியது. ஆனால் முதல் முறையாக ராணுவம் தன் கடமையைச் சரியாக செய்தது.*)
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Fact Check
BOOM went through the replies in the tweets carrying the video and found that several users claimed that the video is from Bihar, not Haryana.
We then ran a keyword search in Hindi with words such as "police, lathi-charge" and found some X users (formerly Twitter) posted similar visuals from the same location on July 13; according the tweets, the protest took place in Bihar's Patna where the police did a lathi-charge.
Click here to view one such post.
Taking a cue, we went through the keyframes in the video and noticed that a shop named "Chhabra Sports" is present in the location of video. The same shop can be geo-located on Google Street View situated on Mazharul Haque Path in Patna, Bihar.
The comparison between a frame from the viral video and a glimpse of the location on Google Street View can be seen below.
We also found similar visuals of the protest from the location on a video report by TV9 Bharatvarsh uploaded on its official YouTube channel on July 13, 2023. The report mentioned that the police did a lathi-charge on the BJP workers in Patna, Bihar.
According to a July 14 report by Hindustan Times, "The BJP on Thursday organised a Vidhan Sabha march mainly over the state government’s teacher recruitment policy and a demand for the resignation of Deputy Chief Minister Tejashwi Yadav in view of the new chargesheet recently filed against him by the Central Bureau of Investigation (CBI) in alleged land-for-jobs scam in railways, among other issues."
The report also quoted Patna senior superintendent of police (SSP) Rajiv Mishra who said the police resorted to 'mild' lathe-charge after the protestors threw stones and chilli powder at police personnel.