[Warning: Visuals may be distressing for some. Reader discretion is advised.]
A disturbing video is in circulation on social media, where a bulldozer crushes a bovine animal to death. The accompanying captions claim that the incident took place in Uttar Pradesh under ‘Bulldozer Baba’, which was a moniker adopted by UP CM Yogi Adityanath in the recently-concluded state polls.
The gruesome video is massively viral on Twitter.
The video is also viral on Facebook with the same claim.
Fact-check
We performed a keyword search on YouTube and came across multiple news reports that contained the same video. These reports are at least two years old and are in the Marathi language. This suggests that the viral video cannot be recent and is possibly from Maharashtra.
We played the report Zee24 Taas and in the first 15 seconds of the video, the news anchor says that the location of the incident is unknown however, the people recording it can be heard speaking Marathi. A video report by ABP Majha confirms the location as Indapur, Maharashtra.
Taking these clues, we performed a keyword search on Google and came across multiple news reports about the arrest of the accused. The viral video is from Maharashtra and the alleged incident took place in October 2019.
Mid Day quoted said Assistant Police Inspector Jeevan Mane of Bhigwan Police Station stating, “The bull was sick; it had been wreaking havoc in the village after [being] bitten by a mad dog who had rabies.” According to Free Press Journal, accused Rohit Shivaji Atole and Bhausaheb Anna Khartode absconded from the village after the brutal killing.
Hence, a video of the gruesome killing of a sick bull in Maharashtra in 2019 was falsely claimed to be from UP.
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