Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms. In this video, police personnel were seen charging a few men with lathis (sticks). It was claimed along with the video that Gyanesh Kumar, Chief Election Commissioner of India has deployed 2,407 companies of Central forces for the first phase of West Bengal elections.
During the investigation, we found the claim to be misleading. The video is old and not recent and has been shared linking it to recent West Bengal elections.
Claim:
X (formerly Twitter) user Harmeet Kaur shared the viral video with misleading claim.
Other users are also sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the video.
After running a reverse image search on multiple keyframes, we found the video posted on Facebook page of canning news on 9 July 2023.
The caption said (translation): See the condition of Basanti in Canning on voting day.
A similar video was posted on a different Facebook page.
A combination of Google keyword search led us to a video posted on News18 Bangla in 2023.
It had the similar visuals which were shown in viral video.
The caption said: Panchayat Election 2023: Bomb recovered in Basanti on voting day! Police step in to control the situation.
We then checked for the recent news reports. We did find reports stating that Election Commission planned to deploy 2,407 companies of Central Forces for first phase of Bengal polls.
Conclusion: An old video of police personnel from 2023 from Panchayat Election, shared as recent ahead of West Bengal elections. The viral claim is misleading.
