Old Clip From Mumbra Shared as Recent Video From Kanpur

The video was also shared in 2020 with a false claim linking to the COVID-19 lockdown in Indore.

Fact-Check | An old video from Maharashtra has gone viral as a recent one from Kanpur.

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing police personnel lathi charging a small group of people on the road has gone viral with a claim that it is from Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur.

Violence broke out in Uttar Pradesh's Kanpur on Friday, 3 June, during a shutdown observed by Muslims protesting against Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader Nupur Sharma's comments against Prophet Muhammad.

However, we found that video was from Thane's Mumbra in the state of Maharashtra. The video, which dates back to 2020, 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.

CLAIM

Sharing the video, one Facebook user wrote a sarcastic comment that read, "आधी रात को कानपुर की गलियों से आती हुई ये उह, आह की आवाज़ को ही शास्त्रों में शुकुन कहा गया है".

[Translation: The sound coming from the streets of Kanpur at midnight has been called 'good luck' in the scriptures.]

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

Several other social media users shared similar captions while sharing the viral video on Facebook and Twitter, archives of some can be found here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome Extension, we extracted keyframes from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes on Google and Yandex.

While going through the search results on Yandex, we found the same video posted in April 2020 with a caption that said that the incident was from Indore. We found similar posts on Facebook as well. The posts claimed that police had lathi-charged people who had allegedly attacked doctors who had earlier visited the area to test people for the novel coronavirus.

A link to the post can be found here. 

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot/Altered by The Quint)

Taking a cue from that we conducted a keyword search for "police lathi-charge on people in Indore during COVID-19 lockdown" and found a fact-check story published by fact-checking organisation BOOM.

BOOM had found that the video was not from Indore but from Mumbra in Maharashtra's Thane and it didn't have anything to do with the COVID-19 lockdown. A police official from Mumbra police station confirmed to the fact-checking organisation that the video was from Kausa area of Shree Lanka, Mumbra and it showed police lathi-charging people because a fight had ensued between two groups.

A report on the same, along with a longer version of the viral video, was published on a YouTube channel called Hindustani Reporter.

WHAT HAPPENED IN KANPUR?

Muslim organisations in Kanpur had called for shutdown in the city to protest against the statements given by BJP spokesperson Nupur Sharma. Violence broke out during the protests with people clashing with the police and pelting stones.

At least 29 people have been arrested as of Monday, 6 June. The UP police on Monday, released photographs of 40 individuals who were allegedly involved in the violence and asked people to provide information on the people.

Evidently, a video from 2020 was falsely linked with the violence that broke out in Kanpur in June this year.

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