Police thrashing TMC workers in Bengal? 2023 video falsely viral on polling day

A video is going viral in the context of the West Bengal assembly election. In the clip, two men can be spotted sitting under a large Trinamool Congress (TMC) banner, flanked by party flags. A group of police officers surrounds these two men. One officer begins slapping them viciously, then proceeds to beat them with his baton, forcing them to leave.

The video is viral in the context of various reported instances of violence that transpired on April 23, the day on which 152 of the state’s 294 constituencies went to vote.

X user Arun Yadav Kosli (@ArunKoslii) posted the viral clip on the morning of April 23, writing that TMC workers were campaigning on the road in the vicinity of polling stations. At the time of this article being written, the post has managed to accumulate more than 2 lakh views, and has been re-shared more than 670 times. (Archive)

तृणमूल कांग्रेस के कुछ शांतिप्रिय कार्यकर्ता मतदान
केंद्रों के पास सड़कों पर बैठकर तृणमूल के लिए प्रचार कर रहे हैं

फिर देखिए क्या हुआ pic.twitter.com/3g2WMNKhOw

— Arun Yadav Kosli (@ArunKoslii) April 23, 2026

Readers should note that this user has been found spreading misinformation and communal propaganda on several occasions in the past.

Another X user, @AmitLeliSlayer, amplified the video, with the viral claim that the police officers were beating the TMC workers for campaigning on the day of election. (Archive)

Some peaceful workers of the Trinamool Congress are sitting on the roads near polling stations, campaigning for Trinamool.

And then see what happened.😂😂 pic.twitter.com/N9kQ1zU7B2

— Boiled Anda (@AmitLeliSlayer) April 23, 2026

Several other users on X, like (@Kumar1975Rajesh), (@Abhimanyu1305), (@AjitDeolINC), (@Kartiktusharr71), (@SouleFacts), (@HinduAsociation), shared this video in the context of the West Bengal election. 

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Fact Check

To verify the authenticity of the claims behind the viral video, we broke it down into keyframes.

A reverse image search on one such keyframe led us to this Facebook video, originally uploaded on July 9, 2023.

The caption, which is in Bengali, indicates that the video was shot on the day of voting in Basanti block in Canning, a town in the South 24 Parganas district of West Bengal.

On looking at the video closely, we were able to make out that the party banner sports the name of Nilima Mistry.

We found that Nilima Mistry Bishal was the TMC candidate from Basanti Zilla Parishad-1 constituency of South 24 Parganas district, during the 2023 Panchayat elections in West Bengal.

We also found a YouTube report by News18 Bangla, from July 8, 2023, which features the same clip that went viral recently. It mentions that on the day prior to polling day, that is, on July 7, there had been reports of crude bomb blasts in the area. The video shows the police and CRPF rounding up local residents who were on the ground, campaigning on the day of the election.

To sum up, the viral video, which purports to show local TMC workers being beaten up by police personnel on polling day is almost three years old. It is not connected to 2026 assembly polls.