A disturbing video of a group of men sexually assaulting a woman on a bike in Bihar has surfaced on WhatsApp with a false claim that it shows an incident from West Bengal. The captions further give the incident a communal spin and state that the accused are Muslims who attacked a Hindu woman.
The video is circulating on WhatsApp with an English caption, "Look how much lenience the dirty demon Mamatha Banergy CM of west Bengal has given to the Muslim bastards who openly harass & assault Hindu women.This is the horrible state of affairs in all states where the useless,antinational & antihindu parties like TMC,AAP,Communists& Congress are ruling.Just imagine what happens to Bharath if these dirty parties rule the country." (Sic.) A caption in Kannada along with the video also shares the same narrative. The caption reads, "I didn't want to post this video, but I decided to put it up - how is Muslim harassing in Bengal. This is a daily violence against Hindus in Bengal." (Original caption in Kannada: ಈ ವಿಡಿಯೋ ಹಾಕಲು ಇಷ್ಟ ಆಗಲಿಲ್ಲ ಆದರೂ ಗಟ್ಟಿ ಮನಸ್ಸು madi ಹಾಕಿದ್ದೇನೆ, ಯಾವ ರೀತಿ ಮುಸ್ಲಿಂ ರ ಅಟ್ಟ ಹಾಸ ನೆಡಿಯುತ್ತ ಇದೆ ಬಂಗಾಳದಲ್ಲಿ. ಇದು ದಿನ ನಿತ್ಯ ಹಿಂದುಗಳ ಮೇಲೆ ನಡೆಯುತಿರುವ ಹಿಂಸಾಚಾರ wes bangal ಬಂಗಾಳದಲ್ಲಿ. sic.)
BOOM has chosen not to include the video due to its disturbing content.
The video has resurfaced amid widespread allegations of violence and sexual assault meted out to women in West Bengal's Sandeshkhali by local Trinamool Congress leaders Sheikh Shah Jahan, Shib Prasad Hajra and Uttam Sardar. The TMC leaders have been accused of illegal landgrab and turning them into 'bheris' for pisciculture. Women have also come to the streets to protest against party members sexually abusing them in Sandeshkhali, an island village in south Bengal. While Hajra and Sardar have been arrested, Shahjahan is still at large. The Calcutta High Court on February 26, directed the West Bengal Police to arrest Shahjahan within seven days.
Fact Check
BOOM first broke the video into several keyframes and ran a reverse image search on a few of them. We were directed to a Facebook post from October 5, 2021, with the same video. The caption with the post stated that the incident happened in Bhihar's Chhapra district. Click here to view an archive of the post.
We then ran a relevant keyword search and found a YouTube news bulletin on the incident uploaded on October 7, 2021. The video has screengrabs from the viral video. According to the report, the incident happened in a village in Chhapra where a woman was groped and physically assaulted by a group of men.
We then looked up news reports on the incident. According to a LallanTop report, the incident happened in Dariyapur Police Station area of Saran district. The woman was groped on the road that goes to Darihara Chauwar from Dariyapur rail workshop.
A Navbharat Times report stated that the six accused are Guddu Rai, Amod Rai, Rakesh Kumar and Dharmendra Kumar from Akilpur, while Arvind Kumar and Nitish Kumar are from Samanchak village. Four out of them were arrested. The report quoted the police as saying the incident happened on September 27, 2021.
According to a Hindustan Times report, Guddu Rai, the main accused who filmed the incident, was arrested on October 11, 2021.
BOOM has reached out to Dariyapur Police station to know if there was a communal angle to the incident. The article will be updated when we get a response.