An old video of a man performing stunts with a tractor has gone viral with the false claim that it shows farmers practising for the upcoming Republic Day parade on 26 January.
The video could be traced back to February 2020, when Haryana-based stunt performer Subhash Lathwal had shared the video on Facebook.
CLAIM
Several users shared the video with the claim, “26 जनवरी परेड़ की तैयारी करता किसान”
(Translation: “Farmer practising for 26 January parade.”)
A video uploaded by ‘K9media’ on Facebook had garnered over 10 million views and 663,000 likes at the time of writing this article.
Another user, ‘Anil Malik,’ had garnered over 44,000 likes and 20,000 shares at the time of writing this article.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
A reverse image search led us to a video uploaded on YouTube on 10 February 2020, with the title, “सुभाष हरियाणा Swaraj 855 स्टंट मारने के लिए ग्राउंड का जायजा लेता हुआ.”
(Translation: “Subhash Haryana Swaraj 855 taking stock of the ground to perform stunts.”)
A keyword search of ‘सुभाष tractor stunt’ also led us to several other YouTube videos that identified the man as Subhash Lathwal, who performs stunts on his Swaraj 855 tractor.
We then looked up Lathwal on Facebook and found the original video on his page, which he had uploaded on 3 February 2020.
Clearly, the video cannot be of a recent practice session for the 26 January parade.
He has also uploaded several other videos of him performing stunts and participates in competitions, according to his Facebook page.
Evidently, an old video has been revived to make false claims that it shows farmers practising for the Republic Day parade.
TRACTOR RALLY ON REPUBLIC DAY
While the farmers have planned a tractor march for the Republic Day on 26 January to contest the farm laws, the Delhi Police filed an affidavit in the Supreme Court seeking to stop the rally for law and order, and in public interest.
However, on 11 January, the Chief Justice of India had expressed his scepticism over the claim that the farmers were planning to ‘disrupt’ the Republic Day parade with around 2,000 tractors, during a hearing. Senior advocate Dushyant Dave also strongly contested this, saying there was no intention in any of the statements about the tractor rally disrupting the parade.
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