A video where a Muslim man has his hands tied while a person makes him drink some liquid out of a bottle has been shared on social media with the claim, “In India, an old Muslim man is forced to drink Alcohol and cow urine by Indians.” From a Pakistani handle @YouniisBaloch, the video has received over 24,000 views (archive).
The same video was also found on Facebook, shared with the identical narrative. It has in fact been circulating since April, including with a Turkish caption that alleges the same.
𝐈𝐭’𝐬 𝐌𝐨𝐝𝐢’𝐬 𝐈𝐧𝐝𝐢𝐚
In #India, an old #Muslim man is forced to drink Alcohol and cow urine by Indians. India has become a hell for minorities.@radioislam @ejaz_k @salpatel786 @Shufflz22 @KatSuleman @KathradaFound @SAMNET786 @MRN1SA @ijassat @channelislam @Fay42 pic.twitter.com/4uuExKfazY
— Friends of Kashmir (@kashmir_friends) April 3, 2019
Incident from Sri Lanka
A Pakistani handle had uploaded the video on the website dailymotion.com in October 2015. This was also uploaded with a similar claim – “Indians caught an old man wit cow and see what they did.” However, the dialect spoken by the people in the video did not sound akin to any Indian languages or neighbouring countries in the north.
Alt News contacted Lisa Fuller, a journalist who reports on conflict and human rights in Sri Lanka. She informed that the people in the video are conversing in Sinhalese. The man was not force-fed cow urine or alcohol but was given water when he asked for the same. “He had stolen a cow. When asked why he did so, the man replied that he didn’t have anything to eat,” said Fuller.
Fuller also sent us the same clip uploaded by a YouTube user in April 2015 who described it as – “Muslim Stole Cow in Sri Lanka.” This was a longer version of the 30-second video shared on social media. As evident from the footage, the man wasn’t force-fed as he does not resist or stop the person from making him drink the water.
The incident was reported by Sri Lankan portals Hiru News and Sri Lanka Muslims. According to the latter, the man was caught by villagers in Maraluwawa, Wellawa in Kurunegala, tied to a tree and later handed over to the police.
A video of a man tied to a tree by villagers in Sri Lanka for stealing a cow was shared to claim that a Muslim man was made to forcefully drink cow urine and alcohol in India. Earlier in March, we had debunked another video from Sri Lanka, a case of ragging, which was shared in the Pakistani social media ecosystem as boys throwing water on Muslim girls in India.
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