In the wake of rising hate crimes across India, multiple videos surface on the web on a daily basis showing atrocities inflicted on minorities. With a surge of such videos online it becomes important for one to be cautious of fake news peddlers.
CLAIM
In one such video which has recently surfaced on social media, it is being claimed that a Christian woman was beaten and paraded naked in Bihar by the RSS. It further alleges that the woman’s house was burned before she was hounded.
The claim along with the video reads, “BIHAR: A Christian woman was stripped naked, beaten & paraded through the streets by radical Hindus aka RSS. The group burned her house before they dragged her out onto the street. India is becoming a "dangerous place" for minorities. God forbid! (sic).”
(The Quint will not post the video in the story due to it graphic nature.)
The aforementioned tweet had garnered over 6,000 retweets and over 5,500 likes at the time of writing the story. An archived version of the tweet can be seen here.
The video is also being massively shared on Facebook with the same claim.
WHAT’S THE TRUTH?
The video hasn’t been manipulated in anyway and the fact that it’s from Bihar is true. However, the claim that the woman was beaten and paraded by the RSS for being a Christian was discovered to be false.
The video is of an incident which took place on 20 August 2018 when residents of Bihar’s Bihiya town stripped a woman, beat her, and paraded her naked, on suspicions of being involved in the death of a 16-year-old boy.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT?
On 21 August, The Quint had also reported on the incident. The report mentioned that 15 people were arrested and eight police and Government Railway Police (GRP) personnel were suspended in connection with the case.
A 16-year-old boy, identified as Bimlesh Kumar, had visited the town to seek admission into Class 12, and was found dead near the woman’s house with wounds on his genitals. The villagers suspected that he was killed by those living in the red-light area nearby following which the locals also set her house on fire and torched a motorcycle.
According to a report in Hindustan Times the woman was rescued from the mob and four policemen were suspended for dereliction of duty.
On 30 November 2018, a local court sentenced five people, including a local Rashtriya Janta Dal (RJD) leader Kishori Yadav, to seven years in prison while 14 others were sentenced to two years.
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