A video of a man tied to a tree, beaten and forcibly made to drink urine is falsely being shared with the claim that it shows an instance of Dalit oppression. However, we found that there is no caste angle to this incident and the incident was actually between members of the same community.
The Quint is not including the visuals of the incident in this article due to their disturbing nature.
CLAIM
The video shows a man tied to a tree, being made to drink something out of a bottle, while people surround him, some of whom have sticks in their hands. People can be heard abusing him and speaking in a dialect.
The video was shared by a Twitter user called Kush Ambedkarite, with the claim that it showed Dalit oppression at its peak in Rajasthan. He also claimed that the incident happened in Barmer, where a Dalit man was tied to a pillar and made to drink urine.
At the time of publishing this story, his tweet had 2,200 retweets and over 3000 likes, while the video had nearly 3,00,000 views.
Another Twitter handle named ‘The Dalit Voice’ shared the same video and had over 4k likes and retweets at the time this story was published.
Gujarat MLA Jignesh Mevani also reacted to this tweet, calling it an “obnoxious, inhuman and horrendous act”.
We also found a large number of other Twitter users sharing the video with the same claim, that it showed Dalit oppression in Rajasthan.
The same video was also viral on Facebook.
WHAT WE FOUND
We found that the claim mentioned that the incident had allegedly taken place in Barmer, Rajasthan. Thereafter, we searched for news reports of such an incident, and came across several from 31 July. A Hindustan Times report said that it had taken place in Ratanpura village in Chohtan block, Barmer, adding that the reason behind it was an alleged illicit relationship. The report made no mention of a caste angle to the incident.
We also found reports by Dainik Bhaskar and Jagran, both of which said that the incident had happened but had no caste angle to it, having taken place between members of the same community over suspicion of an illicit relationship.
We also found that Barmer Police had taken to their official Twitter handle to reply to the tweet by the handle called ‘The Dalit Voice’ to clarify that the video was being shared with a false claim of Dalit oppression.
Further, we reached out to Barmer police to confirm the details of the incident. Speaking to The Quint, Khinv Singh Bhati, Additional SP, Barmer confirmed that such an incident had happened at Chohtan block but that there was no caste angle at all and that those involved all hail from the same caste - Bhil - and the same community.
“The man had entered and spent the night at the house of another man when he was not present and his wife was there. When the family members of this man found out, they caught him and beat him up and forced him to drink urine,” SP Bhati said, adding that later, the men involved also sorted out the matter among themselves without approaching the police.
“When we came to hear of the incident, we lodged a suo-motu complaint and named six people in the FIR and arrested them,” SP Bhati told The Quint. When asked about what he was made to drink, SP Bhati said that it had not been tested so could not be verified as such but that is what the police had been told by the parties.
The Quint also checked a copy of the FIR lodged by the police and found that all the men were indeed from the same caste. The FIR also mentioned that the incident had taken place on 25 July and that it had come to the notice of the police on 28 July, after which action was taken. The matter has now been disposed of, SP Bhati said.
Therefore, a dispute over an alleged illicit affair which led to a man being beaten up is being shared with the false narrative that it shows Dalit oppression in Rajasthan.
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