For the past few months, we have repeatedly come across a video posted by many on social media in which a young girl is beaten up by a mob and then set to fire. Almost every instance of this video is accompanied with an identical piece of text which claims that the young girl is a Marwadi girl who was married to a Muslim guy in Andhra Pradesh and that the girl is beaten up and burnt because she refused to wear a Burkha. We have created a video to put forward the facts and to show how a 2 year old mob lynching video from Guatemala is being passed off as a Marwadi woman being murdered by a Muslim mob. Please watch the video below to see how the right-wing fake news cum hatred industry works and how scarily effective it is. For those who are not comfortable with Hindi, please read on.

The following piece of text accompanies almost every instance of the video that is posted either on Facebook or WhatsApp.

आंध्रप्रदेश
Andhra pradesh की एक हिंदू मारवाड़ी लड़की जिसकी शादी एक मुस्लिम लड़के के साथ शादी हुई थी ।
आज कुछ मुस्लिम लोगों नें मिलकर बुरीतरह मारा फिर जिंदा जला दिया ।
बुर्का ना पहनने के लिये – -देखिये दिल दहला देने वाली video

सभी ग्रुप मेमबर्स से निवेदन है की इस विडियो को इतना फैलाओ की देश के प्रधान मंत्री श्री मोदी जी इस पर कोई instant action ले आज Whatsapp के माध्यम से इतना सभी तक पहुँचावें की प्रधानमंत्री श्री नरेंद्र मोदी जी तक यह पहुँचानें का आज whatsapp इस्तेमाल करनें का असली दिन है ।
plz plz plz..
ये video send करो

A screenshot of one such instance of the video can be seen below:

Guatemalan girl being portrayed as a Marwadi woman burnt by a muslim mob

An approximate English translation of the Hindi text would be as follows:

A Hindu Marwardi girl Andhra Pradesh was married to a Muslim guy.
Today, a few people belonging to the Muslim community beat her up and then burnt her alive.
Because she refused to wear the Burkha – Please watch this heart-cuddling video.

All group members are requested that this video should be shared so extensively via WhatsApp that the video reaches Prime Minister Shri Narendra Modi so that he can take some instant action regarding this issue and today’s the day when WhatsApp needs to be used effectively for this purpose.
plz plz plz..
Do send this video

The below collage shows a sampling of these posts.

collage-of-fake-posts-marwadi-woman2

So, what’s the truth? The truth is that this video is from Guetemala and is that of a girl who’s accused of having murdered a Taxi Driver along with two other male accomplices. She is being beaten up and burnt alive by a lynch mob while the the two other guys managed to escape. This was covered extensively in international media in May 2015 when the incident occurred.

You can click on the following Google Search link to view the news articles which covered this issue in May 2015 and the youtube links to the video. I should warn you that the video is extremely barbaric and difficult to stomach, so avoid seeing the video if you can.

https://www.google.co.in/search?q=guatemala+16+year+old+burnt+beaten

Indian media outlets also covered this issue. The following is a snapshot from the website of Daily Bhaskar.

So, that’s that. A fake video to invoke extreme hatred is being shared exensively by the right-wing ecosystem. But how effective is it? To guage that, I tried backtracking in order to find the earliest instance of this video. The one that I found was posted by a page with called ‘फेसबुक मिडिया (Facebook Media)’ with a username @HinduRashtraSena on February 22nd, 2016.

This would suggest that this video has been viral on social media for over a year now and it continues to be viral. This video with an identical piece of text has been circulated tens of thousands of times and has reached the WhatsApp account of lakhs of people. That is how scarily effective this fake news cum hatred industry is. If you listen to the video, it can be easily made out that the language spoken is not an Indian language. Those who shared the video must have seen the video. That is the other scary aspect. There’s so much hatred in people that a video which screams fake is accepted as truth and shared so many times. There is an urgent need for citizens who are against this fake news industry of the Sangh to be aware of their ways and actively work against this. That is the only way forward.

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About the Author

Co-Founder Alt News, I can be reached via E-mail at pratik@altnews.in and on Facebook at https://fb.com/freethinker.