A nearly two-year old video of people vandalising a statue of Soviet leader Vladimir Lenin in Tripura has resurfaced with false claims that a Bharatiya Janata Party leader pulled down a statue of Dr Babasaheb Ambedkar.
The video shows an excavator pulling down the statue as people cheer in the background and raise slogans of Bharat Mata Ki Jai as the statue falls.
The 40 -second clip is doing the rounds with claims about one BJP MLA Karani Singh, who led the removal of a Dr BR Ambedkar statue.
It has been captioned as, "BJP MLA Karani Singh removing Baba Saheb Ambendkar statue What will Modi say on this move...Make these videos so viral that they can watch all over India."
BJP MLA Karani Singh removing
— Shameer (@Shameer25301252) January 28, 2020
Baba Saheb Ambendkar
statue
What will Modi say on this move...
Make these videos so viral that they can watch all over India pic.twitter.com/qc0mDkIN4f
The tweet is archived here.
Below is a screenshot of the posts on Facebook.
BOOM received the same message on its WhatsApp helpline number for verification.
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Fact Check
We broke the video into its key frames and ran a reverse image search. We were directed to multiple news reports featuring screenshots from the video.
We found that the incident occurred in Tripura on March 5, 2018, when BJP supporters brought down a statue of Lenin. The statue was located in south Tripura's Bellonia town. This was after the BJP swept the elections in Tripura that year ending 25 years of Communist rule.
BJP National General Secretary Ram Madhav had also shared the video in a now deleted tweet.
Several offices of the CPI(M) were also attacked following the results. Two statues of Lenin in Tripura and another of Tamil reformer Periyar were vandalised in Vellore in quick succession at that time. On March 7, 2019 then Home Minister Rajnath Singh expressed his disapproval of the incidents of vandalism in a public statement.
The video was also tweeted by wire agency ANI and a detailed report by BBC on the incident can be read here.
#WATCH: Statue of Vladimir Lenin brought down at Belonia College Square in Tripura. pic.twitter.com/fwwSLSfza3
— ANI (@ANI) March 5, 2018
BJP's Biplab Kumar Deb was sworn in as the tenth chief minister of Tripura on March 9, 2018.
BOOM looked up for a BJP leader named Karani Singh on Myneta.info, a database on Indian Lawmakers by Association for Democratic Reforms but could not find any BJP leader by the same name.