Fact Check: Video showing a man being attacked by an angry crowd is not related to NCP politician Jitendra Awhad
Video showing a man being attacked by an angry crowd is not related to NCP politician Jitendra Awhad
Video showing a man being attacked by an angry crowd
A video has recently gone viral on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter. The video depicts a disturbing scene: a man is being assaulted by an angry crowd at an event. Many social media users are claiming the victim is Jitendra Awhad, an NCP MLA, and that the attack was sparked by his derogatory comments about Hindu sentiments. He said Lord Ram was a non-vegetarian.
Fact Check:
The claim is false.
The video's central scene takes us back to July 2015, in Sangli, Maharashtra. News reports from that time describe a fight that erupted at Awhad's program, allegedly triggered by his comments about writer Babasaheb Purandare.
Further, with a YouTube search, we were able to confirm this account by finding the full video of the stage brawl, uploaded by India Today back in July 2015, confirming the details presented in the news reports.
However, the viral video contains an additional clip of Awhad walking away with a group, which wasn't part of the 2015 brawl. Reverse-searching screenshots of this segment led us to Awhad's own YouTube account, where he posted it in November 2023.
Therefore, the viral video is a misleading patchwork of two unrelated events, both occurring years before Awhad's recent controversy.