A disturbing video from Bhagalpur, Bihar, showing a man hacked to death, is viral with a false claim that the Trinamool Congress (TMC) goons attacked a Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) worker in West Bengal.
The 45-second long video, which has spread like wild fire on several social media platforms since April 26, 2019 documents a disturbing scene of violence.
The video has been captioned as, “Mamata’s goons are openly hacking and killing BJP workers. Please do something President and Modiji.” (हर के डर से बौखलाए ममता के गुंडों सरेआम भाजपा के लोगों का क़त्ल करने मैं लगी हैं कुछ करिए राष्ट्रपतिजी और मोदीजी)
You can view the archived version of the tweet here and the video below.
WARNING: The below video is extremely graphic in nature
While several handles have not identified the BJP party worker, BJP’s Krishnanagar candidate Kalyan Chaubey, went on to identify the victim as Sagar Roy, in a tweet. He later deleted the tweet, which was captioned as, “TMC goons brutally attacked BJP worker Sagar Roy in Kaligram village of West Bengal. Roy had reportedly resisted Trinamool attempt at booth capturing.”
Screenshot of Kalyan Chaubey's Tweet that was shared in a Facebook Page
Sagar Roy, a BJP worker, was beaten up in West Bengal's North Malda, during the second phase of elections.
Fact Check
Several Twitter users pointed out that the incident was not from Bengal but was from Bihar and had no political overtones. A user linked a news report by Prabhat Khabar on the incident.
Another user also pointed out that the women in video were crying for help in Hindi, which suggested that the video was unlikely to be from West Bengal.
The gruesome incident took place in West Tola village under the Goradih police station in Bhagalpur district on April 16 2019, when Suresh Mondal was killed by his father and younger brother over a family dispute.
It is not clear who shot the video at the time.
According to the news report, it was a family feud which led to the murder of the elder son, though the exact cause of the dispute is not known. Ashish Mondal, the brother of the deceased, has been taken into custody.
BOOM reached out to the Goshalla police station in Bhagalpur where a senior officer corroborated the events. Local police told BOOM that video was from the same incident and that the accused were in custody.
Other news outlets have also reported on the incident. You can read them here and here.