An old video of actor Akshay Kumar condemning widespread incidents of women being molested in Bengaluru on New Year's Eve in 2017 has surfaced and is being falsely linked to the horrific incident of women being paraded naked and sexually assaulted in Manipur.
A disturbing video of two women being paraded naked in Manipur and allegedly gang-raped surfaced on July 19 triggering a huge outcry over the Centre's apathy and silence towards the ongoing violence in Manipur. Prime Minister Narendra Modi on July 20 addressed the viral video and assured that the accused will not be spared. According to reports, the incident happened on May 4, 2023 in the Kangpokpi district, near Imphal. The women reportedly belonged to the ethnic Kuki-Zo tribe while the assaulters were Meiteis. Four people who were allegedly part of the mob which paraded the women have been arrested so far.
In the video, Kumar can be heard saying, that he is also a father of a daughter and that society should not call themselves human if they cannot respect women. He also stressed the need to change the mindset regarding women rather than judging them on the basis of their clothes.
The video is circulating with the caption, "Akshay Kumar spoke about the incident in Manipur." (Original text in Hindi: मणिपुर घटना पर बोले अक्षय कुमार…….|)
Click here to view the link of the video on Twitter.
To view the archive of the video, click here.
Links of similar tweets can be seen here and here.
Fact Check
BOOM ran a reverse image search on the keyframes of the video and found the original video tweeted by Akshay Kumar’s official Twitter handle @akshaykumar in 2017.
The video has been captioned as, "The Bangalore incident makes me feel we r evolving backwards,from humans to animals,rather beasts coz even animals are better!Truly shameful."
We also found a news report by NDTV on the 2017 Bengaluru molestation case which happened during New Year celebrations; the report also talks about Kumar's reaction to the incident.
In 2017 several women said they were groped and molested by mobs of men while taking part in New Year's Eve celebrations in the city. More reports about the incident can be seen here and here.
Akshay Kumar also tweeted condemning the Manipur gangrape incident on July 20, 2023. He wrote, "Shaken, disgusted to see the video of violence against women in Manipur. I hope the culprits get such a harsh punishment that no one ever thinks of doing a horrifying thing like this again.”