A disturbing video of a woman being beaten up by a group of armed men and women is circulating with a false and communal claim that a pregnant Muslim woman was assaulted by Hindus in Manipur. The video shows distressing visuals of women taking turns to beat a middle-aged woman lying on the ground as she cries for help.
BOOM reached out to Manipur Police who denied any communal angle to the assault and said the victim is allegedly a drug dealer.
The video is circulating on X with a caption in Arabic that translates to, "A video that the whole world should watch. A Muslim woman was brutally beaten by filthy cow worshipers in Manipur state, India." Click here to view an archive of the X post.
The video has been viewed 1.3 million times at the time of writing this article. BOOM has not included the video given its graphic nature.
The video is also circulating on WhatsApp with a similar communal claim. We received the video on our tip-line (+91 77009 06588) with a request to verify the same.
Fact Check
BOOM, with the help of Manipuri sources, was able to figure out that the woman in the video was speaking in a dialect spoken largely by the Meitei community.
We found a reply to an X post with the video, which stated that the incident is not communal and the victim is allegedly a drug dealer.
Taking this as a cue, we ran a related keyword search on Facebook and found a post by a page called Manipur Fact Check. The post contained visuals of the same woman as seen in the viral video. Click here to view an archive of the Facebook post.
BOOM was also able to attain the unblurred version of the same video featured in the post. Below is a comparison the same.
According to the post, the woman is one Ibem Begum, allegedly a drug dealer. The post further said that the incident happened in Golapati, Imphal where a middle-aged woman was beaten up by members of the group United National Liberation Front militants (UNLF), a banned insurgency group in the area.
The Facebook post identified the assailants as UNLF based on the logos and insignia seen in the video and claimed that the assailants also are Muslims.
We then reached out to Manipur Police who confirmed that the incident is from Manipur and ruled out a communal angle to the incident. A senior police official from Imphal East told BOOM, "She is reportedly a Muslim woman. The incident happened in Imphal, Manipur, where she was caught for alleged drug trafficking. But prima facie there is no communal angle."
Upon further keyword searches we found a press release issued by an organisation called the Manipur Meitei Pangan Revolutionary Army (MMPRA). Muslims are known as Pangals or Pangans in Meitei dialect.
The release in Meitei said that no other organisation will be allowed to meddle in the restriction of selling and consumption of drugs in the Pangal community, except the MMPRA.
The release, dated July 16, 2024 also features the names of the alleged drug king pin Mohammed Taj Khan and his family members including Mumtaz alias Ibem Begum.
Below is a screenshot of the part with the names of the accused.
We then reached out to a representative of the Manipuri Meitei-Pangal Social Unification & Upliftment Organisation, a Muslim organisation working for the upliftment of Manipuri Muslims based in Imphal. The body confirmed that the viral video shows a woman named Mumtaz Ebem, who is allegedly notorious for smuggling drugs. Ebem was caught by the Muslim outfit of the UNLF at Golapati, Hatta in Imphal. The representative further confirmed that the woman was not pregnant when she was beaten by the people of MMPRA and ruled out any communal angle to the incident.
The representative from the organisation told BOOM, "Ebem is a smuggler and the group asked her not to engage in the buying and selling of drugs. The woman was then asked to surrender and was warned not to smuggle drugs anymore."