A disturbing video of a gangsters brutally assaulting a man is being shared with a misleading caption that members of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) are beating Muslims and asking them to go to Pakistan.
Delhi police told BOOM that the the men seen in the video are members of a gang who extort money and assault those who refuse.
The caption accompanying the video reads, #Haryana, '#Gurgaon BJP workers beating muslim and asking go to Pakistan.'
BOOM was able to ascertain that the men attacking the victim in the video are members of the notorious 'fracture gang' operating in and around the National Capital Region, Delhi.
The archived version of the post can be accessed here. The video can be viewed here, however viewer's discretion is needed.
The 36-second-long video shows a group of men abusing and hitting the victim with rods and sticks while he pleads to be let off. The video has been shared from many Facebook pages with the same claim.
Fact Check
BOOM reversed image searched keyframes from the video obtained using InVID, a video verification platform led us to to a news story published in a Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar on March 14 this year. The report shares the same video and mentions that three people of the notorious gang were arrested by the Haryana police on March 13.
According to several news reports, the incident is from Faridabad, Haryana. The gang operated in and around the NCR area and was involved mainly in extortion. The members recorded their barbaric act and uploaded it online to instill fear in public, the reports said.
BOOM called the Haryana police to check the veracity of the viral claim. Sub-inspector Shamsher of Sector 55 police station said, "These men belong to the 'fracture gang'. We were looking for them since a long time. They are notorious for breaking the limbs of their enemies and uploading the videos online."
Denying any political or communal angle to the entire incident, the SI added: There are no political connections of these gang members. The victim was a local and the claim of him belonging to a particular community is false.
News agency ANI had also tweeted about the incident.
Shamsher added that the three accused who were arrested earlier in March are in jail now.