Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely shared on social media platforms, in which police personnel were seen beating with lathis (sticks) two men seated under a banner of the Trinamool Congress by the roadside. The caption asked whether the Chief Election Commissioner of India, Gyanesh Kumar, deployed 2,407 companies of Central forces for the first phase of West Bengal elections for this kind of action.
During investigation, we found the claim to be misleading. The video is nearly three years old, but has been shared linking it to the ongoing West Bengal state 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.
The same 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 the 2023 Panchayat Elections, shared as one from the ongoing West Bengal state elections. The viral claim is misleading.
