As the first phase of the Lok Sabha elections in five constituencies in Maharashtra’s Vidarbha region concluded peacefully on April 19without any major untoward incidents, an old video from Thane was being widely circulated on social media platforms. The video shows a person throwing ink on the Electronic Voting Machine while casting his vote. During the investigation it was found that the video is from 2019 and from Thane.
Claim:
X user, Sumaiya Khan shared the viral video on her profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the same video with similar claims.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by running a YouTube keyword search, using the terms, ‘Man throws ink on EVM’. We found a video on the YouTube channel of News18 India.
Through the video we found out that the man who threw ink on the EVM was a BSP leader. The name of the person stated in the video was ‘Sunil Khambe’.
The video was uploaded on the channel four years ago. We further ran a Google keyword search and found the video and the news story on several platforms.
The reports mentioned that the incident took place in Thane, and Sunil Khambe was immediately taken into police custody.
In the next step of investigation we spoke with the ANI correspondent of Nagpur, Saurabh Joshi, who informed us that no such incident took place in Nagpur during the first phase of voting.
Conclusion: Old video of Thane from 2019 of an incident where a man threw ink on the EVM is being widely shared as recent from Nagpur.
