A video showing a man shooting a deer inside an enclosure is viral on social media with the claim that the man in the yellow shirt is BJP MLA, Anil Upadhyay. The Twitter user @Juhi43372039 shared the video with a caption in Hindi that reads, “BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay. They are in government so no one will feel outraged by this act…”
Viral in 2021
Facebook user ‘Jagga Pehalwan’ posted this video on May 7, 2021, and wrote, “Salman Khan is still going through the courts for deer hunting. But this BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay is learning to hunt by shooting a deer in a park. Make it viral and the court should punish him”. (Archived link)
This video was viral on Twitter and Facebook with the same claim.
This video was also shared on WhatsApp as that of BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay. Alt News had received several requests on its WhatsApp helpline number to verify the viral clip.
Fact-check
Alt News found that the video in question is not from West Bengal as claimed, but from Bangladesh. With the use of relevant keywords, Alt News found the video posted on YouTube in July 2015 by the official channel of The Daily Star, an English newspaper in Bangladesh.
The video was titled ‘Killing deer’, and the accompanying information states, “This video shows a man shooting a deer in close range in an enclosed farm. As he does this with a cool head, someone else films the incident, including the slaughtering of the bullet-injured deer. Later, the group poses for their “heroic accomplishment” with the slaughtered animal lying in front of them. And they are heard cheering for what they term “legal shooting”. The video has been collected from the Facebook page of Moin Uddin”.
Alt News also found an article by The Daily Star, published on July 12, 2015.
According to the report, the shooting took place at a farm in Chittagong owned by the shooter, identified as Moin Uddin. Moin Uddin himself had uploaded the video on Facebook on July 4, 2015, following which there was an uproar, with the authorities raiding the farm where the shooting took place. After the incident, Moin Uddin sought to defend himself via a Facebook post.
It is important to note that Alt News has debunked multiple claims in the past that were viral in the name of a fictional MLA Anil Upadhyay.
To sum it up, a video from Bangladesh shot and uploaded in 2015, has been shared on social media with the false narrative that it depicts a BJP MLA Anil Upadhyay, killing a deer. The story was earlier fact-checked by Boom Live.
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