K’taka Cops ‘Punishing’ Lockdown Violators? No, Video is From Rewa

We found that the viral video was shot in April 2020 in Madhya Pradesh’s Rewa.

A video showing police personnel performing 'aarti' of people who were violating COVID-19 lockdown restrictions has been shared with a claim that it shows Karnataka Police.

The claim comes in the backdrop of an observation by the Karnataka High Court wherein they asked the state's police to avoid the use of "excessive force" against lockdown violators.

However, we have found that the video, which dates back to April 2020, is from Madhya Pradesh's Rewa, and not Karnataka, as mentioned in the viral claim.

CLAIM

The viral video was shared by film-maker Vivek Agnihotri, who wrote a caption that said, "I am told Karnataka HC ordered police not to beat up those who violate lockdown. This is the creative idea police came out with. (sic)"

The same caption was copied and used by other Facebook and Twitter users, who also shared the viral video.

Journalist Sushant Sinha also tweeted the same video and claimed that it was from Karnataka.

Archives of the more such posts can be found here, here and here.

WHAT WE FOUND OUT

Using InVID-WeVerify, we extracted keyframes from the video and ran a reverse image search on some of the keyframes.

In the search results, we found a longer version of the same video posted on Facebook on 11 April 2020.

The caption of the video said, "Madhya Pradesh Police lockdown todne walon ki aarti utaar rahi hai. Rewa MP"

[Translation: Madhya Pradesh police performing aarti of lockdown violators.]

Taking a cue from the caption, we contacted a local journalist based in Rewa. He confirmed to The Quint that the video was shot in Rewa’s Sirmour Chowk and added that it had been widely shared last year.

While going through the keyframes in the longer version of the video, we also spotted a medical store in one of the frames. The name of the store was "Golden Medical". We looked up Golden Medical in Rewa and found photos of the store on Google. The store was located on Sirmour Chowk.

We then reached out to Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP) Manoj Varma, who, too, confirmed that the video was from Rewa.

While going through the search results, we also found a video published by Zee News’ Bihar and Jharkhand channels, which falsely claimed that the video is from Patna, Bihar. We contacted police officers in Patna who told us that the video was not from Patna.

Evidently, an old video from MP's Rewa has been shared as Karnataka Police performing aarti of lockdown violators after the high court asked them to not use “excessive force”.

(With inputs from SM Hoax Slayer.)

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