Old Clip of Girls Beating Eve-Teaser Falsely Linked to Cong's UP Campaign

The three year old video showed a group of girls beating up an eve-teaser for harrassing them.

A video showing some girls beating up an alleged eve-teaser has gone viral with a claim that the girls were encouraged by Congress National General Secretary Priyanka Gandhi's slogan,'Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon' (I am a girl and I can fight).

Gandhi's slogan is a part of the party's women empowerment campaign for the upcoming 2022 Uttar Pradesh State Assembly elections.

However, we found that the viral video was first shared in December 2018 and showed girls beating up an eve-teaser in Uttar Pradesh's Baghpat.

CLAIM

The claim viral with the video read, "एक युवक स्कूल की लड़कियों के साथ बदतमीजी कर रहा था. लड़कियों ने प्रियंका गांधी जी द्वारा शुरू की गई मुहिम #लड़की_हूँ_लड़_सकती_हूँ का भरपूर उपयोग करते हुए युवक को छठी का दूध याद दिला दिया."

[Translation: A young boy was misbehaving with some girls in a school. The girls made complete use of the campaign started by Priyanka Gandhi 'Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon', taught the boy a lesson.]

We found that the video was shared widely on Facebook and Twitter with the same claim, archives of some of which can be found here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

We extracted some keyframes from the viral video using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome Extension and conducted a reverse image search on some of the keyframes.

In the search results, we came across the same video posted by The Times of India on their YouTube channel.

The video posted on 10 December 2018 was titled, "Watch: Girl students thrash eve-teaser inside school premises in UP's Baghpat"

We conducted a keyword search to look for news reports on the incident and found that several new organisations had reported on the incident, including The Quint.

According to the report, "a group of female students from Dharm Singh Saraswati Balika Inter College in Uttar Pradesh’s Baghpat can be seen beating up a man with sticks for harassing them." The report added that the accused was identified as Kapil Chauhan and had been arrested under Section 294.

The "Ladki hoon, lad sakti hoon" slogan was launched as a part of the UP state assembly elections to focus on issues related to women's empowerment and development in the state.

मैं नहीं हूं अबला
मैं दुर्गा हूं मैं शक्तिरूपा हूं
मैं लड़की हूं लड़ सकती हूं#LadkiHoonLadSaktiHoon#प्रियंका_का_शक्ति_विधान pic.twitter.com/VvuAhmdjc8

— UP Congress (@INCUttarPradesh) December 8, 2021

Talking about the campaign, Priyanka Gandhi had told The Week, "We also want to emphasise that ‘Ladki Hun Lad Sakti Hun’ (I am a girl, I can fight) is not about women carrying guns or swords to fight but about them becoming so strong with knowledge of all necessary things that they could take upon any situation in life with confidence".

Evidently, the girls in the viral video could not have been inspired by Priyanka Gandhi's election slogan as the incident occurred years before the slogan was coined.

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