Old Video of Protesters Blocking Smriti Irani's Car Resurfaces Ahead of UP Polls

The video is from 2020, when protesting Congress workers had blocked Smriti Irani's car in Varanasi.

A video of a group of protesters stopping Union Minister for Women and Child Development Smriti Irani's car is being shared a few weeks ahead of the 2022 Uttar Pradesh elections with a claim that the incident had occurred recently.

However, we found that the video was from 2020, when Congress workers had stopped Irani's car in Varanasi over her comments criticising Rahul Gandhi's visit to Hathras, following the brutal gang rape of a 19-year-old Dalit girl.

CLAIM

The 2:20-minute video is being shared with a claim in Hindi that reads, "गजब का स्वागत हुआ है स्मृति ईरानी का उत्तर प्रदेश में .किसी गोदी मीडिया ने यह न्यूज़ दिखाई क्या..??"

(Translation: Smriti Irani received a wonderful welcome in Uttar Pradesh. No media would show this.)

Several social media users have shared the video with similar claims, and the archived links of the same can be seen here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

In the video, one protester can be heard saying in Hindi, "Give answers for Hathras."

Taking a cue from this, we searched for news reports using relevant keywords and found one by The Quint from 3 October 2020.

The report read that Congress workers had blocked Irani’s car in Varanasi after she made comments criticising Rahul Gandhi's visit to Hathras.

NDTV had reported that some Congress workers were detained following the protest.

We also found a photo gallery of the incident on the website of News18 which dates back to 4 October 2020.

Further, we also looked for videos of the incident and searched on YouTube using relevant keywords.

We found a longer and clearer version of the video published on the YouTube channel of the newspaper, Navbharat Times, from 3 October 2020.

Clearly, a video from 2020, when Congress workers had stopped Irani's car to protest against the Hathras gang rape, is being shared now ahead of the UP elections.

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