By Shrey Banerjee
An old video of a group of girls in uniform thrashing a man with sticks inside a campus in Uttar Pradesh, is going viral on X with false and communal claims that the man is a Muslim who got beaten up by Hindu girls for allegedly harassing them.
BOOM found that the incident took place in 2018 at the Dharm Singh Saraswati Balika Inter College UP's Baghpat district and that the accused is a Hindu.
The video showed a group a girls in school uniform chasing and beating a man wearing a grey hoodie with sticks.
Right wing users took to X for sharing the video with the caption, "Brave Hindu girls chase an alleged molester from 'Vishesh Samuday' who entered their Girls only school. The molestor runs away like a coward. Place & Date unconfirmed."
The words 'vishesh samuday' or special community is a veiled reference to Muslims, in the caption of these posts.
The archive of the post can be seen here.
Similar X posts could be seen in Hindi as well.
The archive of the post can be seen here.
The same false posts could be seen on Facebook as well.
To view an archive, click here.
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Fact Check
BOOM found that the claims are false and that the perpetrator is a Hindu man named Kapil Chauhan. Moreover, the incident took place in December 2018 in UP's Baghpat district.
We ran a reverse search of keyframes in the video which led us to a video report, published on December 10, 2018 by the Times of India. The video captioned, "Girl students thrash eve-teaser inside school premises in UP's Baghpat", contained details of the incident and carried the same video.
The report can be viewed here.
Taking a cue from the above, we ran a detailed keyword search which leading us to a report by the Quint, published on December 10 that year, which mentioned the incident occurred at Dharm Singh Saraswati Balika Inter College, situated in Uttar Pradesh's Baraut in Baghpat District. The report also contained a statement from SHO Sanjeev Kumar, who mentioned the perpetrator Kapil Chauhan was allegedly harassing the students and was arrested under Section 294 of the Indian Penal Code (IPC).
This report from the Quint contained a video of the incident, uploaded on YouTube by a channel named 'Siliguri ILS' on the same day. We found the video to be similar to the one currently being shared on social media.
The video can be viewed here.
The incident was carried in news outlets in other languages during the same period. You can view the reports here and here.
BOOM also found the video was uploaded on X (formerly Twitter) on December 9, 2018 where UP Police' official account was mentioned. We observed the concerned authorities replied to the post saying the accused has been arrested and the incident is being investigated.
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