Comedy skit carried by media outlets as bride slapping groom for chewing tobacco

Several news channels recently aired a viral video claiming it shows a bride slapping her groom after she saw him chewing gutkha (tobacco) during the wedding ceremony. Aaj Tak aired 35 seconds of the video on loop thus stretching the clip for three minutes. The channel later took down its tweet after Alt News Hindi published a fact-check report on the video. However, an archived link to the tweet can be accessed here.

Times Now, TV9 Marathi, Tez TV, One India Hindi, Zee MP Chhattisgarh, NDTV, APN News Hindi, News18, Samayam TV, and Lokmat are some of the prominent media outlets which covered this video. One report states, “The bride did the right thing. As soon as she realised the groom was chewing gutkha, she was furious and slapped him. She also demanded that he return to the wedding altar after spitting out the gutkha.” Pro-BJP propaganda website OpIndia also carried a story on the video.

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All the outlets attributed the clip to the same Instagram handle.

Fact-check

This footage has actually been clipped from an old comedy video uploaded by a verified YouTube channel named Chandan Mishra on April 4, 2020. The channel clearly mentions that the visuals are part of a comedy skit. The scenes that appear at the 7:20 mark of this 11-minute video are now being circulated on social media. The skit is in Maithili, a regional language of Bihar.

Chandan Mishra channel has posted many other such comedy videos which have views in the thousands. The protagonist featured in all of these videos is Ramlal, who is seen in the role of the groom in the viral video.

Alt News also found a Facebook page named ‘Ramlal Maithili‘, which has shared these comedy videos.

A clip of an old comedy video was reported by several media outlets as a genuine video of a bride slapping her groom for chewing tobacco during their wedding ceremony. None of the outlets carried out a basic verification before carrying the clip.