A video of a man being stripped and thrashed by a group of women for allegedly harassing school students in Ambala, Haryana, is viral with false claims that the accused is a Muslim.
The two-minute-long clip shows women beating up the accused and forcing him to strip naked in front of a group of people. In the caption, the accused has been identified as a 'mullah'. The caption reads as, "(TTC News) A Muslim man tried to rape a 5-year-old girl in Jain Bazar of Ambala. Local women caught him and beat him and made him roam around naked. Stricter legal actions should be taken against a man with such filthy thinking."
(Original caption in Hindi: (TTC न्यूज़) अंबाला शहर के जैन बाजार में एक मुल्ले ने 5 साल की लड़की से रेप करने की कोशिश की जिसमें वहां की महिलाओं ने पकड़ कर उसको नंगा करके घुमाया ऐसे घिनौनी सोच वाले व्यक्ति के खिलाफ सख्त से सख्त कानूनी कार्रवाई होनी चाहिए।)
BOOM reached out to inspector Sunita Dhaka of Ambala Women's police station, who identified the accused as Pawan Kumar alias Sonu and rubbished a communal angle to the incident.
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BOOM has chosen not to include the video as it is distressing in nature.
An archived version of the tweet can be
seen here. Below are screenshots of tweets and
Facebook posts that are viral with the same narrative.
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Fact Check
We ran a relevant keyword search taking clues from the video clip and found a news report by Dainik Bhaskar, along with the same video.
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The incident happened on January 20 in Ambala, when women nabbed one Pawan Kumar, who was accused of sexually harassing school girls. According to the report, a young girl refused to go to school as Kumar made sexual advances towards them. Following which mothers secretly followed him and caught him near Jain Bazar area of Ambala, where he was beaten up and stripped off his clothes.
BOOM also reached out to inspector Sunita Dhaka of Ambala City Women police station, who corroborated the events and denied a communal angle.
Dhaka said, "Three girls accused a 40 year-old-man Pawan Kumar of passing lewd comments and showing his private parts to them. One out of them had stopped going to school, following which her mother caught the accused red-handed and paraded him naked." Dhaka further added that there is no communal angle to the incident.
Kumar has since been arrested and charged under relevant sections of The Protection of Children from Sexual Offences (POCSO) Act, and IPC.