An old video of people throwing slippers at security personnel at the trailer launch of Pushpa 2 in Patna, Bihar, is viral falsely claiming that it shows security personnel attacked with slippers at the ongoing Kumbh Mela in Uttar Pradesh.
The Maha Kumbh Mela 2025 started on January 13, 2025 and is being held at the Prayagraj, Uttar Pradesh. The religious event, is seeing massive crowds with nearly 45 crore people arriving in the first month itself. There have been several allegations of mismangement after a recent stampede left several visitors dead.
The viral video is being shared on X with a caption in Hindi that translates to, "In Kumbh, nationalists and sanatani people threw slippers at army men! Had they been Muslims, this would have been the news on all government media channels today, but perhaps all this is allowed to people of this religion. #KumbhMela2025"
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the incident in the viral video is from the trailer launch of the movie Pushpa 2: The Rule in Patna, Bihar, back in November 2024.
We broke the video into key-frames and ran a reverse image search and found results for the same video from November 2024. The same visuals were posted on a longer Instagram video on November 17, 2024 with the caption describing that it is from the launch of Pushpa 2 trailer in Patna, Bihar.
This pre-dates the ongoing Kumbh Mela in Uttar Pradesh.
We then searched on Google with the keywords "Chaos pusha 2 trailer patna" and found several news reports on the incident.
Similar visuals can also be seen in the Instagram post by The Telegraph posted on November 18, 2024.
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According to the report, the filmmakers of Pushpa 2 organised an event to launch the trailer at the Gandhi Maidan in Patna, where frenzied fans went out of control causing a stampede-like situation in a bid to catch a glimpse of film stars Allu Arjun and Rashmika Mandanna.
As the crowd went out of control, security personnel used lathi charge to manage the crowd at the event.
We also found that the security personnel present in the video belong to the state police and are not part of the Indian army.
BOOM has debunked misinformation around the ongoing Kumbh Mela 2025, with unrelated AI related photo and audio going viral with false claims.
