A years-old video from India of a police officer hitting a man with a stick has resurfaced online and has misled users into thinking it shows a flare-up of religious violence in June 2022.
Religious tension is running high in parts of India after two members of the country’s ruling BJP party made remarks about the Prophet Mohammed. A total of 38 people have been arrested for rioting in one northern city and over a protest planned later in Mumbai.
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On social media, users have repeatedly shared a 23-second video of a man being hit several times by a police officer before being chased through the street. Around timestamp 00:20s, at least three police officers are seen hitting another person.
“Watch Hindutva radicalized cops brutally assault an elderly Muslim man,” users on Twitter and Facebook have captioned the clip, which has been watched thousands of times.
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Reuters has not independently verified the original source or location of the footage. However, it is not from June 2022.
A higher resolution and longer version of the clip can be found online since at least April 7, 2020, when it was posted on YouTube. Other iterations from April 2020 are viewable and around timestamp 19:27s.
A segment of the video can be seen in a report by Indian outlet Dainik Jagran from April 6, 2020, see around timestamp 00:45s) (see around timestamp 00:21. According to the description, the scene was recorded in the Bareilly district of Uttar Pradesh, during the Covid-19 lockdown.
Responding to an iteration of the miscaptioned video on June 15, a spokesperson for Bareilly Police said on Twitter that the footage is from 2020 and related to the Covid-19 lockdown.
“Unlawful gathering tried to misbehave with police and police used mild force to disperse the crowd so that Covid infection would not spread,” the force said in the tweet.
Verdict
Miscaptioned. This video traces back to at least April 6, 2020. It does not depict communal violence between Hindus and Muslims in India in June 2022.
