Clip Shows Tripura Police Encouraging Rioters? No, Video is Old

The video could be traced back to March 2018.

Fact-Check | A video shared with a false claim that it shows Tripura police encouraging rioters is an old one. 

(Photo: The Quint)

A video showing some policemen raising "Jai Shri Ram" slogans in front of a crowd has been shared by several social media users with a claim that it shows the Tripura police encouraging rioters in the state.

The claim comes on the back of reported attacks on mosques and properties in the state by right-wing groups. The violence was triggered by protests organised against the attacks on Hindu minorities in Bangladesh.

However, we found that the video is an old one from March 2018 and not a recent one from Tripura. According to a news report published in a Bihar-based news publication, the video was from Bihar's Rosera town.

CLAIM

The caption shared with the video says, "This is Tripura Police. Leading the rioters to burn Muslims' houses, mosques and their shops, with their slogans."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Similar captions were shared by several other social media users on Facebook, archives of which can be found here and here.

A post by a Facebook user called Munna Hussain had over 3,60,000 views while this story was being written. His caption for the video said, "सुना था पुलिस लोगो की मदद करने के लिए होती है, अब समझ मे आया के पिछले 6 दिनो से त्रिपुरा जल क्यूं रहा है."

[Translation: I had heard that the police is there to help the people, now I understand why Tripura has been burning for the last six days.]

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We extracted keyframes from the viral video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension and conducted a reverse image search for some of the keyframes along with relevant keywords. The results lead us to a longer version of the video posted on Facebook on 28 March 2018.

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

The caption of the video said, "बिहार पुलिस दंगाइयों के सात पुलिस भी जय श्री राम के नारे लगा रही है पवित्र नारे को भी यह लोग बदनाम कर रहे है."

[Translation: Seven officers of the Bihar Police are also raising slogans of "Jai Shri Ram" along with the rioters, these people are defaming the holy slogan.]

Taking a cue from the post, we conducted a keyword search for the incident and found that the video was published by a Bihar-based news channel called Patna Live on their Twitter handle.

A story link present in the tweet gave further details about the video. According to the report, the video was from 27 March 2018, from Rosera Bazar in Samastipur district of Bihar. The report further stated that there was unrest in the area on the ocassion of Chaiti Durga puja following which there were reports of stone-pelting and arson.

Section 144 of the CrPC was imposed in the area amid which this video of a policeman raising communal slogans went viral, which was cirticised by people, the report added.

We looked up on Google for other reports on the incident and found news reports that talked about the incident that took place in Samastipur on 27 March 2018.

Evidently, an old video showing policemen raising "Jai Shri Ram" slogans has been shared as a recent one from Tripura where several instances of communal violence has been reported.

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