Video From West Bengal Falsely Shared as BJP Leader Chased in Uttar Pradesh

The video is from West Bengal’s Bolpur and shows BJP’s Anirban Ganguly being chased and attacked by locals.

The video shows a BJP leader being chased in Birbhum, West Bengal before the state's elections in 2021.

(Source: Twitter/Altered by The Quint)

A video showing security personnel escorting and ushering a man into a vehicle as a mob chases him and attacks his car is being widely shared on social media.

The text along with the video claims that it shows a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader being chased by villagers in Uttar Pradesh when he went to campaign there.

The claim comes in the backdrop of the ongoing Uttar Pradesh elections.

However, the clip is not from Uttar Pradesh. It shows BJP’s national executive committee member Anirban Ganguly being chased by locals in Illambazar, located in West Bengal’s Birbhum. Ganguly had contested from the district’s Bolpur constituency during the West Bengal Assembly elections in 2021.

CLAIM

The video is being shared with a claim in Hindi, which takes a dig at the BJP leader, saying that when people ran behind the politician to give him votes, he ran away. It is being shared with hashtags related to Uttar Pradesh.

An archived version of this claim can be accessed here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Archived versions of more claims on social media can be seen here, here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Under one of the claims, we saw a Twitter user commenting that the video was from Bolpur, West Bengal and showed BJP leader Anirban Ganguly.

The user responded to another, who had shared the claim.

(Source:Twitter/Screenshot)

Using relevant keywords, we looked for more videos of the incident. We came across a video uploaded to Bengali news portal Sangbad Pratidin’s verified YouTube channel, dated 29 April 2021.

The video is from Illambazar, West Bengal.

(Source: YouTube/Altered by The Quint)

The video’s title noted that it showed BJP’s candidate for Bolpur Anirban Ganguly’s convoy being attacked in Illambazar in West Bengal’s Birbhum.

We also found a report by The New Indian Express that mentioned that the villagers were carrying bricks and sticks, while running after Ganguly, who said that he went to the area “after receiving complaints that TMC’s goons were not allowing our supporters to go to the booths”.

The same video was also uploaded by Odia news portal Nandighosha TV.

We noticed that the organisation’s logo resembled the watermark seen in the claim.

The watermark seen in the claim resembles the organisation’s logo.

(Source:Facebook/Altered by The Quint)

Lastly, we saw that Anirban Ganguly had tweeted on the day of the incident, telling people that he was fine after the attack in Illambazar.

He referred to the crowd as ‘sloganeering jehadi goons’.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Clearly, a video of an attack on BJP’s Anirban Ganguly in Bolpur, West Bengal was shared to claim that a BJP leader was chased by villagers in Uttar Pradesh.

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