A video, around 37 seconds in length, is viral on social media, showing a Muslim man trying to set fire to a black SUV. It is being shared as showing a Cockroach Janta Party (CJP) protestor setting ablaze a car of a BJP worker in broad daylight. In the video, policemen can be spotted negotiating with the visibly enraged Muslim man.

X user Wokeflix (@wokeflix) shared the clip on July 21 with the caption, “CJP’s Abdul torching a BJP workers car in broad daylight”. At the time of this article being written, the post has managed to attain more than 80,000 views, and over 2,000 reshares. (Archive) 

Another X user, @AstroCounselKK, shared the clip with a similar claim. “This is the reality of this protest… CJP’s Mulla torching a BJP workers car in broad daylight,” they wrote. (Archive)

Zee News posted the video on its YouTube channel on July 21 — but did not mention any context to it — leaving it on the audience to come to their own conclusions. The caption simply stated, in Hindi, that a Maulana (Muslim religious leader) had been spotted setting fire to the car of a BJP worker.

Several other users also amplified the viral clip, including Right-wing influencer Bala (@erbmjha), who shares communal propaganda and disinformation on a regular basis. (Links: 1, 2, 3)

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On Facebook, user Siddhartha Mondal shared another angle of the video, which purports to show the same incident of arson, having taken place allegedly during the CJP protest.

Fact Check

To check whether the claims are authentic, we ran a reverse image search on a keyframe from the viral clip shared on Facebook by Siddhartha Mondal. This led us to an X post uploaded by a news outlet from Bihar named Magadh Updates (@magadh_updates) on July 17. The post contained a video of the same incident shown in the viral clips.  

The caption states that a crowd in Bihar had tried to set a car on fire after an accident.

Taking a cue from this, we ran relevant keyword searches and found a News 18 (@cnnnews18) post on the same incident, on Instagram on July 17. The caption states that an enraged crowd had tried to set fire to a vehicle that had caused an accident in Bihar.

 

View this post on Instagram

 

A post shared by News18.com (@cnnnews18)

We also came across a Dainik Bhaskar report published on July 17, which describes the incident in detail. On July 16, a speeding Thar vehicle had collided with a motorcycle and a rickshaw, causing serious injuries to two people in Civil Lines police station area of Gaya. By the time the police arrived, an inflamed crowd had broken the windshield of the car, and had resolved to set it on fire. Thereafter, the police placated the crowd, and sent the injured people to the hospital.

In conclusion, the viral clip showed the aftermath of a road accident in Gaya, Bihar, and is in no way related to the ongoing CJP protest in New Delhi.

False
Claim:
Video from Bihar viral alleging that a Muslim man has set a car on flames in Delhi's CJP protest

The content is factually incorrect or fabricated.

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