A video of a man smearing ink on a cleric in Ajmer has resurfaced with claims that a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) leader was assaulted for supporting the Citizenship Amendment Act (CAA) and the National Register of Citizens.
The video shows a man smearing a cleric's face with ink suddenly. Taken aback, the latter stands up and makes advances towards the assaulter, who in turn hits him with a pair of shoe. Later, people intervene and stop the fight.
The video falsely identifies the assaulted as Inayat Hussain, national treasurer of the BJP Minority Morcha and former chairman of the Haj Committee. The video has been captioned as, "Inayaat Hussain was welcomed in Indore. Do watch the video. You must have seen such a welcome for the first time."
The clip is viral on Twitter, Facebook and Youtube with similar claims. Two such tweets are archived here and here.
ब्रेकिंग न्यूज़: #CAA, #NRC, #NPR का खुला समर्थन करने कारण इंदौर में भाजपा नेता इनायत हुसैन के चेहरे पर पोती गई स्याही, चप्पलों से हुई पिटाई…
— काकावाणी 2.0 (@007AliSohrab) January 25, 2020
राजनाथ सिंह ने अभीतक निंदा नहीं किया इसलिए काका इसकी कड़ी "निंदा" करते हैं!
आप भी कमेंट लिख "निंदा" कर सकते हैं"pic.twitter.com/SjSfkrpgRw
Viral on Facebook
The video was sent to BOOM's helpline number for verification as well.
Fact Check
BOOM broke the video into key frames and ran a reverse image search. We were directed to the same video that was uploaded to YouTube on March, 2018. The video was captioned as, "See the internal clashes between Khadims in Ajmer."
Upon relevant keyword searches, we found news reports which corroborated the video description. The incident originally happened on March 2018 in Rajasthan's Ajmer Sharif Dargah. According to a report in Newsnation , "In Rajasthan's Ajmer Sharif Dargah, on Monday, a video of an assault on the secretary of the Khadimo Institute Anjuman Shaikhzadgan went viral. In this video, a Khadim named Sheikh Bunty is seen throwing ink on his face and turning his face black, along with slamming him with sandal."
The same was tweeted by News18 Rajasthan on March 12, 2018 and a local news channel Marudhara Times TV.
#अजमेर दरगाह के #खादिम के मुंह पर कालिख पोती, #चप्पल से पिटाई, देखिये पूरा वीडियो- https://t.co/InGagDc81V pic.twitter.com/lU9lyZWNp7
— News18 Rajasthan (@News18Rajasthan) March 12, 2018