Lighthouse Journalism found a video being widely circulated on social media platforms. It is being claimed along with the video that it was filmed in Manipur recently, where a BJP leader was seen being assaulted by the people. During the investigation we found the claims to be misleading. The video is from 2017 when a BJP delegation led by the then state president and now Member of Parliament from Medinipur, Dilip Ghosh was chased and heckled in Darjeeling.
Claim:
X user ‘Sandeep Chaudhary commentary’ shared the viral claim on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post here.
Other users too are sharing the viral claim.
Investigation:
We started our investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and getting several keyframes from the same.
We then ran a reverse image search on all the keyframes one by one.
We found one video on the YouTube channel of NYOOOZ TV, which was uploaded 6 years ago.
The video was titled: GNLF activists attack Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh in Darjeeling
The description of the video said: West Bengal BJP president Dilip Ghosh today faced protests here by Gorkha National Liberation Front (GNLF) supporters, who like some other hill parties demanded that its delegates leave Darjeeling hills immediately. The state BJP president, however, refuted the GNLF allegation that he was in the hills to foment trouble and claimed that the protests against the BJP delegation were fuelled by the TMC.
We then did YouTube keyword search and found another video on the YouTube channel of ABP News.
The visuals in both the videos were similar to that of the video being widely shared on the social media platforms.
We also found several news reports about the incident.
The report updated on October 6, 2017 said, “BJP delegation led by state president Dilip Ghosh was chased and heckled allegedly by supporters of Binay Tamang in Darjeeling. Supporters allegedly of Binay Tamang also disrupted a meeting by Ghosh, which had to be cancelled.”
Conclusion: Video of BJP West Bengal leader Dilip Ghosh being assaulted in Darjeeling resurfaces as recent from Manipur. Viral claims are fake.
