Claim
An old video showing graphic visuals of a person mercilessly beating a temple priest with a cricket bat has been revived on social media. The gruesome video shows the priest pleading to the attacker after continuously being assaulted. The video is being shared with a Hindi caption that translates to, "It is a request to all Sanatani brothers to find out where this scene is from, so that it can get its results!". (Original Text in Hindi: सभी सनातनी भाइयों से अनुरोध हे की मालूम लगाओ यह छाया चित्र कहाँ का हे !जिससे इसे परिणाम मिल सके!)
Fact
The same video was earlier viral in 2020. BOOM's fact check found that the incident took place at Bhattu Kalan in Haryana's Fatehabad district. A reverse image search on a screenshot from the viral video led us to several news articles reporting about the incident. A Dainik Bhaskar report mentioned that a group of people had beaten a temple priest on November 3, 2020, with a cricket bat in Dhabi Kalan village and did a recording of it. The temple priest was taken to a hospital in Mathura before he was shifted to MP. While the Dainik Bhaskar report stated that the priest was attacked because he denied to keep the attackers' bat inside the temple, some other news reports mentioned that the men attacked the priest as he was harassing a woman over phone calls. Fatehabad Police then tweeted that they arrested the four accused involved in the assault. BOOM also reached out to the Station House Officer and Suraksha Abhikarta of Bhattu Kalan police station who confirmed the incident happened in the same village. On the other hand, the Suraksha Abhikarta informed that the attack took place as the men found an audio clip in the phone of the priest. BOOM independently was not able to verify the reason behind the attack. We also accessed an FIR copy related to the incident and were able to confirm that the attackers were not Muslims.