A video showing several people beating a man is going viral to claim that it shows a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader named Rajesh Biju recently being thrashed outside his house in Tamil Nadu.
What are users saying?: Those sharing the video have captioned it, "Tamil Nadu: BJP IT & Social Media Cell District Secretary* Rajesh Biju was brutally thrashed last evening in front of his house. Rajesh is undergoing treatment in Sri Chakra Hospital, Nanganallur, Chennai East."
Are these claims true?: No, the viral video is old and lacks proper context about the incident. It dates back to July 2023, when a fight between two factions of the BJP took place in Nanganallur, Tamil Nadu.
Hints in the viral video: A closer look at the viral video showed a timestamp on the top-right corner that indicated towards the clip being from 2023.
News reports: We translated these words into Tamil "bjp secretary attacked chennai rajesh biju" and performed a keyword search on Google, which led us to a news report published by ETV Bharat.
The report mentioned that BJP general secretary of Chennai East District S Subbiah allegedly assaulted the district's IT division secretary Rajesh.
Subbiah had suspected that a video of him drinking alcohol that went viral on social media was shared by Rajesh.
Rajesh had lodged a complaint at Palavanthangal police station about the incident.
Other sources: We found the same visuals shared on the official YouTube channel of 'Malaimurasu Tv 24X7'. The bulletin was published on 1 August 2023 with a title that said, "BJP executive who attacked his own party member absconding BJP | Chennai."
What did the police say?: Team WebQoof came across a post shared by the official X handle of Greater Chennai Police, where it was mentioned that the incident was from 31 July 2023.
It said that the video showed a fight between two factions of a political party which happened due to a personal dispute.
Conclusion: It is clear that the video is old and is being shared with a misleading context.
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