A highly graphic video of a young man lying in a pool of blood with an abdominal injury is going viral with the claim that it shows an instance of a Bihari migrant being attacked in Tamil Nadu.
BOOM found this claim to be false; our fact-check showed that the video is of an incident that happened in Doddabelavangala, in Karnataka's Bengaluru Rural district last month, when two local students were stabbed during brawl with other locals in the area.
The Hindi caption shared with the video on Twitter, when translated to English, reads, "Biharis are being killed in Tamil Nadu, but the ruling @NitishKumar government of Bihar is sitting with folded hands! Singer of UP Mein Ka Ba Season 2 @nehafolksinger now has curd in her mouth over what is happening in Tamil Nadu."
Fact-Check
BOOM listened to the video, and found that the audio contained background voices of people talking in Kannada. A BOOM reporter translated the phrases being said to the following:
"Brother, who has done this?", "Poor fellow...he has also been stabbed" and "Someone call the ambulance fast".
Taking cue from this, we did a keyword search, to look for stabbing incidents in Karnataka, and came across a Deccan Herald report from February 18, 2023, about two students being stabbed during a brawl after a school tournament in Doddabelavangala, Bengaluru Rural district.
The report states, "Bharath Kumar (23) and Prateek (17), both from Doddabelavangala, were attacked by a four-member gang at the Karnataka Public School ground. Prateek was stabbed with a dagger that remained stuck in his private parts while Kumar was stabbed in the lower abdomen. A police source said the two had nothing to do with the brawl."
The article also contained images of the two students who were attacked, and we found one of them, named in the report as Prateek, closely matching the youth in the viral video.
BOOM reached out to Mallikarjun Baldandi, Superintendent of Police, Bengaluru Dist (Rural), who confirmed to us that video does show an incident from Doddabelavangala, Bengauru Rural District, and that it had nothing to do with the alleged spate of attacks on Bihari migrants in Tamil Nadu.
"The victims were from Karnataka only. Both accused and deceased are local," Baldandi said.
Since last week, BOOM has seen a surge in rumours stating that Bihari migrants are under attack in Tamil Nadu. While a few of these incidents are true, we have found a large number of false claims being made with unrelated, often violent videos, to purportedly show such attacks.
Read our compilation of such claims for more information.
