2020 video captured during an eviction drive in Manipur’s Moreh town linked to the ongoing violence in Manipur - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 3, 2023
A video is being shared on social media claiming it is the recent visuals of women from the Meitei community engaging in a fight with the police in Manipur. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Recent video showing Meitei community women clashing with the police in Manipur.
Fact: The post shared a two-year-old video captured during an eviction drive in Moreh town in Manipur. Protesting the eviction drive along the ICP bypass road in Moreh, women volunteers of Moreh ICP Bypass Road Structure and Land Committee engaged in a confrontation with the police. The video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing violence in Manipur. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, we could not find any reliable sources related to the video. When we searched with relevant keywords on the internet, a video with similar visuals was found recently shared by a user with the same claim on Twitter. This Twitter user in the comment section mentioned that the video was originally uploaded by Roland Kipgen. On searching for further details, we found the same video published on the Facebook page of Roland Kipgen on 12 November 2020. Roland Kipgen posted the video with the title, “Moreh: police vs women fight. GOOSEBUMPS guaranteed”.
A few other users also shared the same video in November 2020, asserting that the video was captured near ICP Bypass Road in Moreh town in Manipur. When we searched for further sources using relevant keywords, a video showing similar visuals was found published by ‘The Morning Bell’ news site on 13 November 2020.  This news site published the video with the description, “Police clash with public near Bypass Road ICP Gate, Moreh following an eviction of constructions and buildings at Moreh Bypass Road.” ‘The Morning Bell’ published a detailed Facebook post reporting about this clash that took near the ICP Bypass Road in Moreh.
As per the reports, a group of women protestors confronted a government eviction force during an anti-encroachment drive along the Moreh ICP Bypass Road on 12 November 2020. The women volunteers of Moreh ICP Bypass Road Structure and Land Committee and female police personnel engaged in an intense standoff that escalated into a physical altercation. Subsequently, the security personnel employed tear gas shells and smoke bombs to disperse the protesting crowd and later, carried out the eviction drive. Several other news websites have also published articles reporting about this eviction drive along the Moreh ICP Bypass Road in November 2020. Those articles can be seen here and here.
Lately, there have been news reports about women protestors engaging in a clash with police in Manipur. A few of those news reports can be seen here and here. But the video shared in the post is old and has nothing to do with the ongoing violence in Manipur.
To sum it up, a 2020 video captured during an eviction drive in Moreh town was falsely linked to the ongoing violence in Manipur.