A video of a man brutally thrashing children is circulating on WhatsApp with the claim that he is DPS Rajbagh teacher Shakil Ahmed Ansari. The accompanying message also calls for a shutdown of the school. Alt News has received multiple requests on its helpline number (+91 7600011160) to verify this video.
Viral since 2019
On July 20, 2019, the then Meghalaya Governor Tathagata Roy quote-tweeted the same video and wrote that the man who brutally thrashed the children in the video has been identified as ‘Sakil Ahmed Ansari’, a teacher of DPS Rajbagh School. It is to be noted that DPS Rajbagh is in Kathua, Jammu and Kashmir.
Alt News had received a request to fact-check the video on its official WhatsApp number in 2019 as well.
Video from Egypt
In July 2018, Alt News debunked the same video when it went viral with a claim that a school teacher at RM VM school in Gujarat’s Valsad district was brutally thrashing the children. We found that the video in question is not from India but from Egypt, where an orphanage manager named Osama Mohammed Othman was secretly filmed by his estranged wife, beating the children with a stick and kicking them.
“The video shows Osama Mohamed Othman hitting the children before kicking them as they run away, screaming in pain. State-run Al-Ahram newspaper said Othman’s estranged wife filmed the video two months ago at Dar Mecca Al-Mokarama Orphanage in Giza,” according to an article published by Daily Mail on August 5, 2014.
According to a 2014 BBC report, Othman was sentenced to three years imprisonment for assaulting seven children in his care and endangering their lives. The sentence included two years of hard labour while the third year was suspended pending the payment of $110 (£87) bail.
A video from Egypt was circulated with the false claim that a school teacher from J&K was brutally beating up children. Earlier as well, the same video was shared with the narrative the teacher is from a school in Valsad, Gujarat. Several videos of child beating have been falsely attributed to DPS Rajbagh in the past.
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