In the aftermath of the BJP’s resounding victory in the West Bengal assembly elections, the state has been engulfed in a spate of post-poll violence. On May 6, BJP leader and chief minister-designate Suvendu Adhikari’s personal assistant was shot dead in Madhyamgram. In this context, a video is being widely shared on social media with the claim that it shows a female TMC worker being exposed for falsely alleging that she was assaulted by BJP supporters during a political clash.
In the video, the woman is seen with a bandage wrapped around her head. Moments later, someone pulls the bandage off on camera, revealing no visible head injury underneath. A scuffle then breaks out among the crowd.
Several prominent news outlets, like The Times of India, ABP News, The Economic Times, and Republic World also reported on the “fake injury.” All of these reports described this as an incident in Bengal. None of the reports had any other detail — the location or date or the identity of the woman.
The Pune Mirror posted the viral video on X. (Archive)
A viral video from West Bengal has exposed a woman identifying herself as a Trinamool Congress (TMC) worker who falsely accused BJP supporters of brutally assaulting her during a political clash. In the video, the woman is seen wearing a head bandage to back up her claims of… pic.twitter.com/1kHWQOuzIN
— Pune Mirror (@ThePuneMirror) May 6, 2026
The claims were also circulated by social media users like @Incognito_qfs, @FrontalForce, and @ocjain4. All three were later deleted.
The same video was viral on Instagram. @thetruth.india posted the clip, alleging that the woman had faked an injury and falsely maligned BJP supporters, by claiming that she had been attacked. This post garnered over 310,000 views.
View this post on Instagram
Fact Check
To check the truth behind the viral claims, we broke down the video into keyframes. Running a reverse image search on one such keyframe led us to this video, uploaded by a channel named “Maurya Dhwaj Express”, on May 6.
The voiceover in the video narrates that the video is from the Shree Krishna Medical College and Hospital (SKMCH) in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur, and has falsely been circulated in the context of West Bengal. The scuffle which is shown in the video was due to a heated argument between hospital staff members and patients. The narrator further adds that the viral video, ostensibly showing the “fake injury,” had been shot by a reporter from their organisation.
Thereafter, we ran relevant keyword searches in Hindi, to see if we could find any reports that corroborated the statement made in the YouTube video uploaded by Maurya Dhwaj Express.
We came across several news reports, by outlets like Dainak Bhaskar, Hindustan News, and Prabhat Khabar, that described what had taken place. A quarrel had resulted over allegations of violence imparted on a patient by a trolley-man in the emergency ward, following which the patient’s family members engaged in a heated tussle with staff members.
India Today spoke to Prem Shankar, the journalist from Maurya Dhwaj Express who had shot the clip. He shared a screenshot of the video saved in his media gallery with India Today Fact Check which clearly showed that it was recorded on April 28, at 13 minutes past 8 in the evening.
The journalist told India Today that one of the staffers had accused some patients of beating her. After that, when she was confronted by patients’ relatives, the fake injury was exposed.
The India Today fact check can be read here. The video was originally uploaded by the journalist in his own Facebook page on May 4. The post can be viewed here.
To sum up, a video, originally shot in Bihar’s Muzaffarpur on April 28, was falsely shared by news outlets and some social media users as a TMC worker in West Bengal “faking” an injury to malign BJP supporters.
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