Groom beaten up for dowry demand: Scripted comedy video shared by news channels, journalists

by Oishani Bhattacharya

A video has gone viral on social media, in which a man dressed as a groom is being beaten up with a sandal by an elderly man who is supposedly the bride’s father. The video has been shared with a caption in Hindi that says, “Groom asked for a motorcycle in dowry, father-in-law beat him up with a sandal in front of everyone, video viral on social media”.

Priya Singh, whose Twitter bio says she is a ‘journalist’ at the Hindi news portal ‘Pardaphash’, tweeted the above video with a similar caption on May 9. The tweet has received over 17,000 views and 300 likes. (Archive)

Dainik Jagran journalist and Twitter Blue user Versha Singh with a following of 11,000 also shared the video with the above claim on Twitter the same day. (Archive)

News18Himachal, the news channel News18’s regional channel for Himachal Pradesh, also tweeted the video with the above caption. (Archive)

Several news channels such as Aaj Tak, News18, ABP Bihar, etc., also picked up the story and shared the said video with similar claims on their social media channels.

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Many other social media users shared the video in question with similar captions like the above posts.

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Fact Check

We ran a reverse image search on some of the key-frames of the viral video, which led us to a YouTube channel: named Maithili Bazar. Here, we found a longer version of the viral video uploaded on May 8, 2021. The viral part begins from the 3:05 mark.

The YouTube channel’s bio says in Maithili: “The most popular comedy channel in Maithili language”.

The video description of the above YouTube video on Maithili Bazar mentions some names under the ‘Artist’ tag.

We looked up one of the artists, Sunil Suman who played the groom, mentioned in the above description and came across his Facebook profile where his bio says: “Maithili Bazar YouTube channel actor”. In the occupation category on Facebook it says that he is the chairman of the channel.

We also came across the Instagram profile of Maithili Bazar. The bio clearly states that the videos posted on the channel are for entertainment purposes.

To sum up, the viral video on social media which has been shared by users and news channels is actually a scripted comedy act by the Maithili Bazar channel. The people seen in the video have been described in the video as ‘actors’ and ‘artists’. More such videos can be found on the YouTube channel. In 2022, another such clip of a video from Maithili Bazar went viral, news portals and social media users believed it to be real, Alt News fact checked the claim.

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