Old video of farmers in MP attacked over child kidnapping rumours viral with false claims

by Priyanka Jha

[Warning: This video depicts videos. Readers are advised to watch at their own discretion.]

Pakistani journalist Asad Kharal shared a video of mob violence with the claim that “Hindu terrorists” in India were responsible for this brutality. The video shows hundreds of men beating a man with sticks and pelting stones at him. (Archived link)

The same video was also shared by Pakistani journalist Chaudhary Ghulam Husain.

The video was viral earlier in March as well. However, with a different claim. It was shared after news articles at the time reported that two men named Zafar and Noor Alam misbehaved with locals and fired a gun in the air to spread panic in Kaushambi, Prayagraj. The villagers in response thrashed Zafar to death and left Noor Alam injured. The video began circulating widely on social media with the claim that a mob of Hindus beat two Muslim youths mercilessly, with one of the victims succumbing to his injuries.

Several people amplified the video with this claim.

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Fact-check

We noticed that Uttar Pradesh police debunked the video on March 22, 2022, clarifying that the visuals were from a two-year-old incident from Madhya Pradesh.

According to a February 2020 report by NDTV, a mob of villagers in Dhar district’s Borlai village attacked six farmers with sticks and stones on the suspicion of them being child abductors. One of the farmers died following the attack.

Alt News had verified the video back in March 2020 when it was being circulated in connection with the Delhi riots.

Speaking to BBC, Superintendent of Police (Dhar) Aditya Pratap Singh stated, “It was a case of missed payments. A group of people reached the area where agricultural labourers were working. The contractor had charged in advance, but not supplied any workers.” In a Times of India report dated February 5, 2020, one of the victims said that five labourers had charged them an advance of Rs 50,000 each, but did not come to work. When they reached the village to collect the money, they were attacked by a mob who mistook them for child kidnappers.

To sum it up, a two-year-old video from Madhya Pradesh was falsely shared by Pakistani journalists as violence by “Hindu extremists”. The same video was viral in India earlier this year with the claim that it depicts an incident from Uttar Pradesh.

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About the Author

She specializes in information verification, examining mis/disinformation, social media monitoring and platform accountability. Her aim is to make the internet a safer place and enable people to become informed social media users. She has been a part of Alt News since 2018.