An old and distressing video of a gangrape in Bengaluru is circulating with a false and communal claim that it shows Hindus raping a Christian woman in Manipur.
BOOM found that the video is from an incident that took place in Bengaluru, Karnataka in 2021 and has nothing to do with the ongoing violence in Manipur.
The video, posted on X (formerly Twitter) has been captioned as, "Reportedly a video from #Manipur where a Christian girl was kidnapped. A few hindu men can be seen ripping off her clothes as she screams for help. The hindu men telecast this on SM as she was being gangraped by them. The hindus in Manipur have regime’s support." (sic.)
The video is also circulating on Facebook with a text in Tamil which reads as, "Atrocities by Sanghi fringes in Manipur." (Original text in Tamil: மணிப்பூரில் சங்கி கும்பல்...செய்யும் அட்டகாசம்)
BOOM has chosen not to include the video as it is disturbing in nature.
The archive of the X post can be viewed here.
There have been reports of fresh violence erupting in Manipur after a viral video of a tribal man's body being burnt surfaced on the internet. According to the police, the video appeared to be from early May and they were investigating the case. Manipur has been facing intense violence and deaths after an ethnic conflict broke out between the majority Meiteis and tribal Kuki-Zo on May 3, 2023. Following the massive violence and displacement, the internet was shut down. While the internet was briefly restored on September 23, it was blocked again after photos of the bodies of two Meitei students who went missing in July surfaced on September 25, leading to more violence.
Fact Check
BOOM was able to ascertain that the incident was not from Manipur as the survivor and the perpetrators can be heard speaking in Bengali. We then ran relevant keyword searches and found screengrabs from the same video that was used as a featured image on News Bangla 24 to report about a Bengaluru rape incident of a Bangladeshi citizen.
According to the report, the kingpin of a trafficking racket operating between Bangladesh and India Ashraful Mondal alias Boss Rafi and Abdur Rahman confessed to the crime in Dhaka's court. The report also mentioned the horrific video which showed five men disrobing a woman and sexually assaulting her.
According to an NDTV report from May, 2021 the gut-wrenching video of the attack, was circulated on social media and it generated immense outrage. Visuals from the video "showed a woman being tortured by the accused and even showed them inserting a bottle in her private parts. The 22-year-old was later allegedly gang raped." Bengaluru police nabbed the assailants and completed the investigation in a 'short span of five weeks.' Bengaluru Police Commissioner Kamal Pant tweeted the same.
The case was being handled by the Whitefield Police who tracked down six of the accused. The other five accused were arrested later by the Ramamurthynagar Police.
The incident happened in east Bengaluru's Ramamurthynagar in the first week of May, 2021. Police arrested 12 Bangladeshi nationals including three women for the assault and rape of the 22 year old. A Times of India report stated that the accused were identified as Shobuj Sheik, Rafiq, Ridoy Babu, Rakibul Islam Sagar, Mohammed Babu Shaik, Hakil, Ajim, Jamal, Dalim, Nasrath, Kajal and Tanya. Ridoy Babu was also a famous TikToker from the country and involved in trafficking women. Babu, along with Rafiq and Shobuj would bring women from Bangladesh to India on the pretext of getting them jobs and would later force them into prostitution.
The report further said that Rafiq and Shobuj were angry with the gangrape survivor as she weaned away from the group and helped women escape from the racket. As an act of revenge, they assaulted her.
A Bengaluru court on May 21, 2022 found 11 people guilty of the charges and they were all convicted.