A viral video of men on motorcycles creating a ruckus and assaulting a man outside the gates of a college is going viral on social media.
What are users claiming?: The video is being shared claiming to show men from the Muslim community, harassing college-going girls and women belonging to the Hindu community outside a college in Tamil Nadu.
(Archives of more such claims can be seen here and here.)
But what is the truth?: The viral clip shows videos of two different incidents in Madurai, Tamil Nadu. We found that in both incidents – which took place on 30 October and 2 November – Madurai City Police had made arrests for harassment of women and assault.
What about the communal angle?: None of those arrested belong to the Muslim community.
How did we find out?: We found that the viral video comprised of clips from two separate incidents from two colleges – Lady Doak College and Sri Meenakshi Government Arts College for Women.
CLIP ONE: LADY DOAK COLLEGE
In the first portion of the clip, we saw text on the gate which read 'Lady Doak.'
A keyword search for this led us to a The Times of India report carrying a screenshot of the video.
It said that nine people had been held for creating a ruckus outside Lady Doak College on 30 October in Tamil Nadu's Madurai.
TOI mentioned the names of the men held, adding that they had assaulted the college's security guard too, and that the police had seized their two-wheelers as well.
Who are the people held?: We found a Facebook post by Madurai City Police with details of the incident. This post too, mentioned the names and addresses of the nine people held in the case, which matched TOI's report.
Surya
Muthu Navesh
Arun Pandian
Manikandan
Sethupandi
Manikandan
William Francis
Vimaljoy Patrick
Arun
CLIP 2: SRI MEENAKSHI GOVERNMENT ARTS COLLEGE FOR WOMEN
While looking into the first incident, we came across an article by The Hindu, which mentioned a "second incident that occurred on November 2," outside Sri Meenakshi Government Arts College for Women, where a student's father had been assaulted.
What is happening in this video?: Taking a cue from this, we looked for reports on the incident and found a report by Free Press Journal, which carried stills from the video.
It mentioned that six people had been arrested in connection to this incident, where one Senthamil Pandian was attacked for confronting a few men while waiting to pick his daughter up from college.
The Hindu reported that Pandian was assaulted after questioning the behaviour of the men around 3:30 pm on 2 November, and had registered a complaint at Tallakulam Police Station.
We found a post regarding this incident of Madurai City Police's Facebook page, which identified the six arrested individuals as Sathishkumar, Ramamurthy, Naveen, Ajith Kumar, Somasundaram, and Sivanagam.
Is the communal claim valid for these videos?: The Quint spoke with Deputy Commissioner of Police, Madurai North, N Mohanraj, who dismissed the claim that the incident was communal in nature. Mohanraj clarified that the incidents were from two different days at two women’s colleges in Madurai.
He further stated that 11 people were arrested in the first incident while six were arrested in the second incident, and none of them belonged to the Muslim community.
Conclusion: Incidents of men harassing a group of women in Madurai was given a false communal colour.
(With inputs from Ananth Shreyas.)
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