An old video of an injured truck driver from Kashmir is viral on social media with a misleading claim that he was beaten up in Udhampur by locals anrgy about the attack on para military personnel in Pulwama
On February 14, a convoy of the Central Reserve Police Force personnel in Pulwama, Jammu and Kashmir was attcked causing the death of atleast 40 soldiers. Following this incident, on February 15, protests erupted in many parts of Jammu region with several vehicles being set on fire by protestors and subsequently curfew being imposed. (Read here)
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In tune with these protests, an old video showing an injured Kashmiri truck driver was revived on social media, with misleading claims that he was beaten up during the ongoing protests in Jammu.
The 1-minute 21-second video is viral on Facebook with the caption of 'Udhampur update...Kashmiri driver beaten'.
The video is viral on Facebook with many groups and pages sharing it with the same caption.
Snapshot of the Facebook search results
FACT-CHECK
BOOM broke the video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search for one of the key frames and found that it was uploaded on some sites in April 2018.
On April 21, 2018, a Facebook page 'Kashmir Prism' had uploaded a similar video with the caption 'Kashmiri driver beaten by police in Punjab'. In the video, which is most likely shot a few seconds after the viral post, the same injured man is spotted with people around him alleging that a traffic police cop was asking a bribe of Rs 500, and when refused the driver was beaten up and his truck grass was broken.
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When the injured driver says he's unable to speak in Hindi, a man near him talks in Hindi saying "He had parked his vehicle to the side. The traffic policeman came and started hitting him on the head...he also started asking for Rs 500."
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The same video was uploaded on Youtube by the same page on April 21, 2018.
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Source: Youtube / Kashmir Prism
BOOM also contacted the Udhampur police who denied that any such incident had happened in the protests that broke out on February 15 of this year. Speaking to BOOM, Rajiv Pandey, Senior Superitendent of Police, Udhampur said, "The video that is circulating is old and no such incident has been reported in Udhampur." He added that the video circulating is fake."
BOOM further found that The Jammu and Kashmir police on February 16, 2019, had put out a tweet quoting the Senior Superintendent of Police of Udhampur alerting people about rumors being spread about an attack on Kashmir based drivers/vehicles at Udhampur.
