An old video of a group of men flogging a school student is circulating on social media with false claims that it shows a Muslim boy being beaten by Hindus for being in a relationship with a Hindu woman in Uttar Pradesh.
BOOM found that the video shows an attack on a school student in Kolar, Bhopal district of Madhya Pradesh. We reached out to Kolar police who confirmed that there is no communal angle to the incident and both the victim and the assailants are from the same community.
The 29-seconds long clip shows disturbing visuals of people flogging a man in an open ground. A scarf can be seen thrusted in the victim's mouth to prevent him from screaming while getting beaten. After the thrashing, the attackers remove the scarf from his mouth and release him as he pleads to them.
The video is being peddled with a Hindi caption that translates to, "Happy (to see) that Hindus have started waking up, our sisters and daughters have also started knowing these Jihadis. Dilshad Khan s/o Nasibuddin District Meerut Uttar Pradesh This puncture son used to pick up Hindu girl Nisha repeatedly and threatened to throw acid whenever she told her brothers about the matter."
(Original Text in Hindi: ख़ुशी हुई हिंदू जागने लगे हैं हमारी बहन बेटियाँ भी इन जिहादियों को जानने लगी है दिलशाद खान s /० नसीबूद्दीन जिला मेरठ उत्तर प्रदेश में यह पंचर पुतर हिंदू लड़की निशा को बार बार उठा लेने कभी तेजाब फेंकने की धमकी देता जैसे ही लड़की ने अपने भाईयों को मामले से बताया उसके बाद ..)
BOOM has chosen not to include the video as it is disturbing in nature.
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Fact Check
BOOM performed a reverse image search on one of the keyframes from the viral video and found that the same video was tweeted by journalist Brajesh Jain on November 4, 2022. The incident, according to Jain's tweet, is from Bhopal, Madhya Pradesh.
Taking a cue, we ran a related keyword search in English and Hindi to find news reports on to the incident. The search led us to Dainik Bhaskar and The Free Press Journal news articles carrying screengrabs from the video.
The Free Press Journal report from November 5, 2022 states that the incident happened in Kolar area on August 29, 2022, but the video went viral only in November. The article also quotes a police source and mentions that the victim is a 16-year-old student who hails from Bairagarh Chichli, Kolar Road in Bhopal.
According to the FPJ report, the victim informed the police that a group of boys asked him to provide details of a student he knew following an argument. The boys then snatched the victim's bike and asked him to follow them to a ground. When reached, the attackers asked the victim to call some other student and later beat him brutally on refusal.
The Dainik Bhaskar article, published on November 4, 2022, reported that the student mentioned the name of the attackers as Richard, Lucky Malviya, Sandeep and Harshit to the police.
BOOM then reached out to Kolar Road police station to get further details about the incident. When asked about the video, Kolar Head Constable Rishi Tiwari ruled out any communal angle to the incident. Tiwari told BOOM, "There is no communal angle to the incident."
Tiwari confirmed the minor victim's name and that he is a Hindu. BOOM is not revealing the identity of the victim since he is a minor.
In a tweet, Meerut Police released a statement from the official handle saying incident is not from Meerut.
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