Fact Check: Video of a man began behaving like a dog seeing his surname printed as ‘Kutta’ is not recent
video shows a man stopping the car of a government official and begin barking like a dog. He also behaves like a dog
Man barking
A video shows a man stopping the car of a government official and begin barking like a dog. He also behaves like a dog. He hands some papers to the official and keeps barking like a dog continuously. The 46-second video has a caption in Hindi which says: “The surname of the man was printed as ‘Kutta’ in the place of ‘Datta’ in his ration card issued by the officials. For this, the person started barking like a dog in front of the officials. The video is in circulation with the caption in Hindi “पश्चिम बंगाल के इस वायरल वीडि
Here is the screenshot of the claim link.
Fact Check:
The claim is Misleading. An old video from the year 2022 has been put in circulation again with the implication that it is a recent issue.
When we extracted the keyframes from the video and checked them using Google reverse image search, we found that the video was in circulation in the year 2022. YouTube channel of local Telugu TV, NTV shared the same video on November 20, 2022, with the title “Viral Video: Man Barks Like a Dog After His Surname "Dutta Printed as Kutta" on Ration Card | NTV”
According to the article published by Aaj Tak, a resident of the Bankura district of West Bengal barks like a 'dog', walks on both hands and feet like a dog, runs after vehicles, and barks at people even while talking. The name of this person who behaves like a dog is Srikanti Kumar Dutta. The reason for his behaving like a dog has also come to light. Everyone was surprised to know this. Know what happened to Srikanti when he started barking and walking like a dog.
An article published in Zee News says: A man in West Bengal's Bankura district behaved like a dog by barking at a local block development officer (BDO) after his surname on the ration card was misspelt as ‘Kutta’ (dog) instead of ‘Dutta’. The widely shared 45-second video shows the man vigorously barking like a dog as he hands over his documents to the government officials, who can be seen sitting inside a car. The man, dressed in a full sleeve shirt and pants, is not heard uttering a single word throughout the video. He stands beside the car window and is seen showing the BDO the documents after which the officer hands those to another person for him to take a glance. This was reported by HT in their article.
Hindustan Times published that the widely shared 45-second video shows the man vigorously barking like a dog as he hands his documents to the government officer, who can be seen sitting inside a car. The man, dressed in a full sleeve shirt and pants, is not heard uttering a single word throughout the video. He stands beside the car window and is seen showing the BDO the documents after which the officer hands those to another person for him to take a glance as well. The erroneous spelling of the surname in the ration card.
In a snapshot of the ration card that HT has obtained, it can be seen that the man's name is written as ‘Srikanti Kumar Kutta’ instead of the surname ‘Dutta’.
According to reports, the man sought help from the Bankura administration several times to get his surname changed but failed each time. Srikanti told news agency ANI that he had applied for the correction of his surname in the ration card thrice. “On the third time, my name was written as Srikanti Kutta instead of Srikanti Dutta. I was mentally disturbed by this,” he was quoted as saying. He further stated that on Friday, he had gone to apply for a correction again, and “on seeing joint BDO there, I started acting like a dog in front of him”.
Hence, the viral video in circulation is old and not recent. The claim is Misleading.