Fact Check: Viral video showing people of a community lathicharged makes a false claim
The Waqf Bill seeks to address issues related to Waqf properties. It proposes to amend an old law that governs;
People protesting
The Waqf Bill seeks to address issues related to Waqf properties. It proposes to amend an old law that governs properties worth millions of rupees donated by Indian Muslims over centuries. This bill will introduce 40 amendments to the existing law. This triggered unrest among the Muslim community. The opposition party members of the Bihar Assembly demanded the withdrawal of the Waqf Bill by the government. Amidst this, a video showing a group of people being beaten up by the police is in circulation on social media with the claim that the people were part of procession supporting Waqf Board in Patna, Bihar.
The users shared the video with the caption in Hindi “बिहार- पटना में वक्फ बोर्ड के समर्थन
Fact Check:
The claim is Misleading. The video is an old one from the year 2015.
When we extracted keyframes from the video and searched them using Google lens, we found that that the same video was published by a YouTube channel named Md Hasanuzzaman, with a completely different narrative in May 2019.
The same video was also published in April 2018 by other users.
In some of these videos, we can hear a person saying that they were demanding salaries from Madarsas but the police is beating us.
The same video was published by Mid-day India YouTube channel in September 2018.
And also a report published in Mid-day.com in August 2015 states that several people sustained injuries when police lathicharged protesting teachers in Patna city, Bihar. The teachers were staging a protest, led by Bihar State Madrasa Teacher's Association, from the last four days against the state government for non-payment of their dues for the past two years.
Hence, the viral video is not recent and shows the protests by Madarsa teachers in Bihar in 2015, as they were not receiving salaries from 2 years. The protest became violent and the police lathicharged them. It is not related to Waqf Bill. The claim is Misleading.