A disturbing video of an aged sadhu being thrashed by his co-passengers on board a train in Tamil Nadu, is viral with claims that he was attacked by a group of Christians for his religious identity.
The viral tweets further claim that the Christians were up in arms against the Hindu saint when he tried to sit in a compartment that was predominantly occupied by the former.
The video shows a group of men attacking the aged passenger, who appears to be a Hindu monk. Passengers can be seen pulling his beard and pushing him, as he resists the attack. The former can be heard abusing the sadhu in Tamil. BOOM reached out to the Southern Railway Public Relations Officer, B Guganesan, who confirmed that the incident happened on board the Nagercoil - Coimbatore passenger train earlier this week.
The video, viewed more than 1.7 lakh times at the time of writing this article, has been captioned as, "This is Horrible! On this train an old Hindu Saint is being beaten by Christians because he got into a compartment which was predominantly Christians & they did not want this Hindu man to sit with them. If I was on that train I swear I would have went berserk on those Christians!"
Warning: Disturbing content. Click here to view the archive of the tweet.
The same video was tweeted with a similar narrative in Tamil by another user.
FACT CHECK
BOOM was able to ascertain that the video is from Tamil Nadu, as passengers can be heard speaking and reprimanding in Tamil.
Multiple replies suggested that the incident was an alleged case of molestation.
We reached out to B Guganesan, the Chief PRO of Southern Railway, who confirmed that the incident happened on board the Nagercoil-Coimbatore passenger train earlier this week. According to Guganesan, the co-passengers beat up a septuagenarian sadhu when he was caught molesting an eleven-year old in the compartment.
He however added that the miscreant was not identified as no complaint was lodged about the incident with the Railway Police Force (RPF). The same was corroborated by a senior official from the RPF of the Trivandrum section.
We also found the same video which was uploaded to Facebook by one Shekinah Santhosh who stated that the incident happened in the Nagercoil-Coimbatore Passenger train where co-passengers thrashed the sadhu for misbehaving with a girl. According to the post, the sadhu was alighted at the Dindigul station.
BOOM could not independently verify if the passengers travelling were predominantly Christians.