Old video of violence by Kanwariyas shared on social media as recent incident

In the wake of the recent violence in New Delhi by Kanwariyas (Lord Shiva devotees), a video is circulating widely on social media. This video shows a mob of saffron-clad men indulging in violence and vandalism, and clashing with the police. Social media users who have shared it have claimed that this is another video of violence by Kanwariyas, and that the incident took place at Modinagar in Delhi.

Journalist Ajit Anjum, whose tweet has been posted above, later deleted it and clarified that the video is not a recent one, but stopped short of an apology. Also among those who shared it is Manak Gupta, who is an anchor with News24.

Gupta has however deleted his tweet and apologised for the same.

Friends, I am told the video I posted earlier was an old video. Deleted. Apologies 🙏

— Manak Gupta (@manakgupta) August 10, 2018

The video has been shared and retweeted widely on Twitter. The earliest instance of this video being tweeted that Alt News could find was by a user @Dilsedesh which was posted on August 9, 2018. The same video has also been posted on Facebook. In one instance, it has been shared with the claim that the hooligans seen in the video are Kashmiris who are attacking Indian security personnel. This video, posted by an individual user has been viewed over 78,000 times.

Video is of 2017

The video in question, which is being shared as a recent incident, is actually a year old. Alt News was notified by a social media user. Anil Tiwari, founder of the website Uttarpradesh.org pointed out to Alt News that the video is of 2017. The same video can be seen below. It was posted on July 20, 2017 and is a news report by the channel News24, the same network that Manak Gupta works for.

The incident had occurred on the Allahabad-Varanasi GT road. According to news reports of that time, three Kanwariyas had been injured in an accident after which they went on a rampage, setting a police station on fire and blocking traffic on the highway for hours.

The same has been clarified by Ghaziabad police via a tweet in which it attached a snapshot of the tweet by Manak Gupta, asking him to refrain from rumour-mongering.

@manakgupta कृपया अफवाह न फैलाये । https://t.co/hiN0HKj47L pic.twitter.com/IGJiz0ferq

— GHAZIABAD POLICE (@ghaziabadpolice) August 10, 2018

Passing off old videos as new has now become a predictable strategy for purveyors of misinformation on social media. All it takes is to push a particular video or image with a false narrative through accompanying captions and messages. Since the incident of violence by Kanwariyas is a recent event, many social media users are likely to believe that this video too represents a recent occurrence, although it is more than a year old and is not related to the recent acts of vandalism.