Lighthouse Journalism came across a video being shared on social media platforms, where a crowd is seen assaulting a man sitting in the car. It was being claimed along with the video that a BJP leader campaigning for upcoming elections was being attacked by people. During the investigation we found the claim to be false. The person attacked is suspended Biju Janata Dal MLA from Chilika, Prashant Jagdev and the video is old.
Claim:
X user BeatalPret shared the video on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and obtained several keyframes of the video, using the ‘detailed view’ in the tool.
On running the reverse image search on the claim, we found a news article published in odishatv.in.
The report suggested that the person seen in the video was suspended Biju Janata Dal MLA from Chilika, Prashant Jagdev. He injured several persons by mowing down his vehicle into a crowd.
We also found a report that stated, 22 people were injured as Chilika MLA rammed his car into a crowd, the leader was assaulted later.
This news report too carried a screenshot from the incident.
We found the video from the incident, where he was seen injuring people, uploaded by OTV on X.
The video was uploaded on March 12, 2022.
Through a Google keyword search we found the visuals from the video being widely shared on the YouTube channel of Kalinga TV. The video was uploaded 2 years ago.
We also found a report, where this expelled BJD MLA Prashant Jagdev recently joined the Bharatiya Janata Party.
Conclusion: Old video of expelled BJD leader Prashant Jagdev being assaulted after he rammed his car into the crowd and hurt 22 people is now being peddled as a recent attack on BJP leader. Viral claims are false.
