An old video of police lathicharge on a group of men is being shared across social media platforms with false claims, linking to it the recent violence in Kanpur after suspended BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma’s controversial remark on Prophet Mohammad.
In the 18-second video, police personnel could be seen beating a group of men on a street at night. Several tweets and Facebook posts of the video are being widely circulated with claims that the police ‘thrashed’ stone pelters involved in recent Kanpur communal violence.
It is to be noted that on June 3, 2022, clashes were reported from Kanpur in Uttar Pradesh after BJP’s now-suspended spokesperson Nupur Sharma made controversial remarks on Prophet Mohammad in a television debate.
Fact Check: Old video, not from Kanpur
EastMojo did a fact-check and found that the video is not a recent one and also not from Kanpur, as claimed by the tweets and Facebook posts.
We analyzed the video using InVID tool and did a Google and Yandex reverse image search of the screenshots and came across several YouTube links of the video. This video was uploaded on YouTube on March 28, 2020. The YouTube caption mentions ‘Mumbra Kausa’, suggesting that the video is from Thane in Maharashtra.
Taking this as a clue, we did a keyword search on Google using keywords ‘Mumbra kausa police lathi charge’. This led us to a number of fact-check reports on the incident.
According to this article published on The Quint, the viral video is from 2020 and was “taken when police had to resort to lathi-charge to disperse two groups who were fighting on the streets in Kausa, Shree Lanka in Mumbra.”
Also Read | Protests outside Delhi’s Jama Masjid demanding Nupur Sharma’s arrest
