Lighthouse Journalism came across a video of a police beating people outside a mosque being widely shared on social media platforms. It was being claimed along with the video that the people are being beaten by the police because they know that the mosques are a source of terrorism. During the investigation it was found that the video of an incident from 2020 when the Covid restrictions were imposed. Viral claim is misleading.
Claim:
X user Haifami shared the viral video along with the claim on his profile.
Check the archive version of the post.
Other users too are sharing the video with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by downloading the video and uploading it in the InVid tool. We obtained several keyframes from the video and ran a reverse image search on the same.
This process led us to a few news reports that featured the same visuals as shown in the widely shared video.
A news report uploaded on livehindustan.com on 26th March, 2020 mentioned that the police thrashed people who violated the lockdown and reached the mosque to offer prayers.
The incident was said to be from Karnataka’s Belgaum.
We found another news report in The Quint.
We also found a report on the Lokmat Times website published in the year 2020.
The report mentioned: Police thrashed people who had gone to offer prayers at a mosque despite the nationwide lockdown in force. In a video, the police personnel can be seen thrashing the people with batons while they were leaving after offering prayers.
We also found the news report on the website of ANI.
We also found the video of the incident uploaded on the ANI X handle on 26th March, 2020.
The caption said: Police thrash people for violating #Coronaviruslockdown in Belgaum. The incident happened outside a Mosque when people were leaving after offering prayers. #Karnataka
Conclusion: Old video of police thrashing people who violated lockdown to offer prayers in mosque goes viral as recent. Viral claims are misleading.
