No, This Is Not a Video From the Funeral Procession of Rajasthan Dalit Boy

The video is from 2020 and shows the funeral procession of an army personnel, Jilajeet Yadav.

A video of a funeral procession of an army personnel is being widely shared on social media with a claim that it shows the last rites of the nine-year-old Dalit boy, Indra Meghwal, who was beaten up by his teacher allegedly for touching a drinking water pot in Rajasthan's Jalore on 20 July.

The boy, a student of Saraswati Vidya Mandir in Surana village, succumbed to his injuries at a hospital in Ahmedabad on 13 August. The teacher was taken into custody by the police. However, so far, they have refuted the caste angle in the crime.

The incident led to outrage with people condemning the incident and speaking up against caste discrimination even 75 years after independence.

CLAIM

The video has been widely shared on social media with a claim that it shows the funeral procession of Meghwal. A Twitter handle called 'Samta Today News' shared it on 16 August and the video has garnered over 43,000 views since.

Several other archived versions of similar posts can be viewed here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We fragmented the video into several keyframes using InVID Google Chrome extension and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes.

This led us to a YouTube video uploaded on 15 August 2020 by a channel called 'Akhileshiyans'. This video was a clearer version of the viral video and it mentioned that it was the funeral procession of 'Jilajeet Yadav', an Indian Army personnel from Uttar Pradesh's Jaunpur.

Taking off from here, we conducted a keyword search on YouTube and came across another video by on 'NYOOOZ UP-Uttarakhand'. This 5-minute long video carried a portion of the viral video (can be seen around 23 seconds). In this video we could hear chants of 'Jilajeet bhaiya amar rahe (Long live Jilajeet)'.

We also looked up news reports on the incident and discovered that Yadav was killed in an encounter between security forces and terrorists in Pulwama district in 2020.

#IndianArmy #LtGenYKJoshi, #ArmyCdrNC and all ranks salute the supreme sacrifice of Sowar Jilajeet Yadav; offer deepest condolences to the family. @adgpi@SpokespersonMoD@ChinarcorpsIA pic.twitter.com/sEmSVJStUg

— NORTHERN COMMAND - INDIAN ARMY (@NorthernComd_IA) August 12, 2020

Clearly, an old video of a funeral procession of an army personnel is being shared as visuals from Indra Meghwal's funeral.

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