Video of student thrashed in Faridabad falsely shared as Dalit boy beaten up at Ayodhya Ram Mandir festival

A video of a boy in a school uniform being beaten up is circulating on social media. Users claim that the incident is from Ayodhya, where organizers of the Ram Mandir Festival beat up the boy, a Dalit, for showering flowers.

The video is viral with a caption in Hindi that can be translated as: “Organizers beat up a child from Dalit community for showering flowers at the Ayodhya Ram Mandir Mahotsav.”

Alt News received requests on its WhatsApp helpline to fact-check the claim.

We also found several users claiming the same on X (formerly Twitter) and Facebook.

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Fact Check

We broke down the video into several key frames and ran a reverse image search on some of them. This led us to a news report by Dainik Bhaskar. The report carried a part of the viral video where the boy was being beaten up by two men. The title of the report in Hindi can be translated as: “Teachers beat the student by throwing him on the ground, VIDEO: Had gone to watch Geeta Jayanti program in Faridabad; Mother said school pressurizing for compromise”. The report mentioned that the incident was from Faridabad where the boy, a student of Class IX at Gaunchi Government School, went to the ‘Geeta Jayanti Program’. It also said that the education department started a probe after the video of teachers thrashing a student had gone viral.

We found another news report by Free Press Journal which mentioned that the student was apparently throwing flowers that hit one of the teachers which angered the latter and he started hitting the boy. That’s when another teacher joined in as well. The report quoted another teacher who said that the boy was throwing flowers at the girls who were dancing at the festival and the two teachers beat him up to discipline him.

As per another news report by Dainik Bhaskar, an FIR was registered against the two teachers under several sections of the Juvenile Justice Act.

None of the reports carried any testimony from the police or the boy’s family to the effect that he was beaten up for being a Dalit.

The Quint reached out to the boy’s mother to clarify whether the boy belonged to the Dalit community and the mother clearly stated that their family was Brahmin by caste.

We also found a tweet by Ayodhya Police from December 26, 2023, where they called the claims false and misleading and mentioned that the incident was from Faridabad, Haryana.

कतिपय ट्विटर हैंडल एवं सोशल मीडिया के माध्यम से यह असत्य/भ्रामक खबर सार्वजनिक रुप से प्रसारित की जा रही है कि अयोध्या में राम मंदिर समारोह के दौरान फूल फेंकने पर दलित लड़के विष्णु को आयोजको ने पीटा।#ayodhyapolice इस असत्य एवं भ्रामक खबर का खण्डन करती है। https://t.co/Zmm92JT8BA pic.twitter.com/JBL2GGwV1p

— AYODHYA POLICE (@ayodhya_police) December 26, 2023

Therefore, the claim that a Dalit boy was beaten up for showering flowers at an Ayodhya Ram Mandir Festival is false. The schoolboy from Faridabad went to a Geeta Jayanti Program where two teachers beat him up for being hit by a flower that he had allegedly thrown. The incident is not from Ayodhya and the boy in the viral video does not belong to the Dalit community.