A three-year-old disturbing video of a youth urinating inside a temple has been revived and is being shared with a false caption suggesting that the people seen in the video are Muslims.
BOOM found that the incident took place in Anakapalle, Andhra Pradesh in 2018 and the accused duo did not belong to the Muslim community. Anakapalle police told BOOM that the two accused - both juveniles - are Christians.
BOOM has withheld their names as the two youth were minors at the time.
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The video is being shared by right wing Twitter users in the backdrop of a recent incident from Ghaziabad, Uttar Pradesh where a 14-year-old Muslim boy had been thrashed allegedly for entering a temple to drink water. Ghaziabad police has arrested two persons - Shringi Nandan Yadav and Shivanand - in connection with the case.
Soon after the video of the brutal assault on the boy surfaced on social media, massive support both in favour of the victim and the accused started trending with various hashtags on Twitter. One such hashtag is I Stand With Shringi Yadav.
Meanwhile, the 3-year-old video of a youth desecrating idols inside a temple by urinating on them was revived and shared on Twitter on March 16, 2021 with hashtags supporting the accused in the Ghaziabad assault incident.
Twitter user Pravin Chauhan shared the video with a caption 'See why they go to the Temples. They don't go there to drink water but to pee on our sacred Shivling'.
Another Twitter user Ravi Rajguru shared the video with a Hindi caption translating to 'It's not them but us who are cowards as we take all this religious torture inflicted on us thinking that if we stand against these jihadis in order to protect our religion, it would be 'uncool'. This will make us 'desi' and 'sanghi'. These people will keep on insulting our religion'.
(Hindi: गुन्हेगार यह लोग नही हम है हम जो कायरो की भांति धार्मिक अत्याचार इसलिए सहन करते है क्योंकि हमें लगता है धर्म की रक्षा करना या इन जिहादियो के खिलाफ खड़ा होना "UNCOOL" है, इस से हम देसी और संघी हो जाएंगे वो लोग युही हमारे धर्म का अपमान करके डरी हुई कौम बनके मजे करेंगे)
Shefali Vaidya has also tweeted about the incident saying 'Saw a disgusting video of a minor Muzlim boy entering a temple and urinating on the Shivlingam. If any Hindu gets mad at this insult and slaps the boys, entire libt@rd media will make the boys heroes, and will start defending their crime. Hindus should ONLY suffer in silence!'.
The video has been shared on Facebook too. Click here for an archive.
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Fact Check
The voices heard in the background in the viral video are in Telugu. We also noticed a watermark of Top Most Media on the viral media. Taking cue, we did a keyword search and found a YouTube channel Top Most Media with 337 subscribers and several Telugu videos.
Upon searching the channel, we found a longer version of the video uploaded on April 11, 2018 with a header 'SHOCKING!!! Boy Pissed Off Toilet on Lord Shiva Lingam Temple | Top Most Media'.
The video makes it clear that the incident is at least three year old.
With the help of keyword search we found a Telugu news report published on April 11, 2018 in MICTV which stated that the incident was from a village in Anakapalle, Visakhapatnam in Andhra Pradesh.
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Taking cue from the report, BOOM contacted Anakapalle rural police station for more details on the incident.
Speaking to BOOM, a police official told that the incident is from 2018. The persons seen in the video were minors and not Muslims, the cop told BOOM.
"Absolutely they are not Muslims, actually they are from Christian minority. They are minors. It was reported in 2018 and both were sent to juvenile jail. They were convicted with fine also. Later on they were asked to maintain good behaviour. Since then there has not been any issue," the police personnel told BOOM.
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