A 28-second video showing a mob carrying saffron flags vandalising a structure and brutally assaulting a man is viral on social media with communal claims. Users are claiming that the incident took place in Meerut after Uttar Pradesh chief minister Yogi Adityanath allegedly made “blasphemous” comments, following which six mosques were vandalised, 52 Muslim homes were set on fire, and several Muslims were burned alive.
Among those sharing the claim was X user Anushi Tiwari, whose bio identifies her as a supporter of the Congress party and Rahul Gandhi. The post, shared on May 10, has garnered over 75,000 views and more than 1,900 reposts at the time of this article being written. (Archive)
Several other users shared the video claiming the same. Below are a few instances.
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Fact Check
To verify the authenticity of the viral video, we extracted several keyframes from the clip and performed reverse image searches. This led us to a report by Dainik Bhaskar, which carried a screengrab from the same video.
The report was titled, “Maharana Pratap Jayanti rally turns violent in Hapur: Youth pushed from rooftop, cars vandalised; 6 injured”. According to the report, the incident took place in Hapur during a Maharana Pratap Jayanti procession. The rally had stopped to garland a statue of Maharana Pratap when some participants reportedly went to a nearby shop in Dehra village. An argument broke out between a youth and a shopkeeper, which soon escalated into a physical fight and triggered violence in the area.
We also found a report by Amar Ujala, which stated that the dispute began over the consumption of gutkha. As tensions escalated, both sides allegedly resorted to stone-pelting. Several men from the procession climbed onto rooftops in the village and vandalised houses.
The report further noted that some youths participating in the procession alleged that the attack was pre-planned and claimed that stones had been stockpiled on rooftops beforehand.
We then came across a video statement by Hapur police superintendent Kunwar Gyananjay Singh shared from the official X account of the Hapur Police. At the beginning of the interaction, a reporter asks whether bulldozer action would be taken against those involved in the violence. In his statement, SP Singh said that three individuals had been arrested and five others detained as part of the ongoing investigation.
According to the press note shared alongside the video statement, the arrested individuals were identified as Zahid, Mehtab and Nausher. They were booked under Sections 191(2), 191(3), 190, 115(2), 352, 109 and 351(3) of the Bharatiya Nyaya Sanhita (BNS), along with Section 7 of the Criminal Law Act.
थाना धौलाना पुलिस ने त्वरित कार्यवाही करते हुए महाराणा प्रताप जयंती के अवसर पर ग्राम देहरा में शोभायात्रा के दौरान आपस में हुई पत्थरबाजी की घटना में संलिप्त 03 अभियुक्तों को किया गिरफ्तार एवं संदेह के आधार पर 05 संदिग्ध व्यक्तियों को हिरासत मे लेकर पूछताछ की जा रही है।
To sum uo, from the above findings, it is clear that the incident is not from Meerut, it's from Hapur, and the clip does not depict vandalism of mosques.
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