Following the passage of the Waqf (Amendment) Act, 2025, in the first week of April, Muslims have been protesting against the newly enacted law across the country, including in West Bengal (here, here, and here). According to news reports (here, here), on 11 April 2025, these protests turned violent in Murshidabad district, West Bengal, resulting in Violence and riots. Reports (here, here, and here) indicate that three people lost their lives in the violence: two Hindus, Chandan Das and Hargobind Das, were killed in a mob attack, while a Muslim man died in police firing. According to reports, hundreds of people (mostly Hindus) affected by the violence in Murshidabad district crossed the Bhagirathi River. They sought refuge in the adjoining Malda district (here, here, and here). On 12 April 2025, the Calcutta High Court ordered the deployment of central forces to restore peace and order in the district (here). Amid this, a video (here, here, and here) has gone viral on social media showing an angry mob snatching the mobile phone of a policeman while he is seen making a call in a public area. It is being claimed that the incident took place in Murshidabad, West Bengal, during the recent riots over the Rent Waqf bill.
Claim: The video showing a mob snatching a mobile phone from a policeman is from Murshidabad and linked to the recent Waqf Bill protest.
Fact: The video is not from Murshidabad and has no connection to the recent Waqf Bill protest. It has been available online since February 2019, which is six years before the current incident. As clarified by the Tirupathur District Police, the video actually shows a mob troubling an Assistant Inspector of the Vaniyambadi City Police in Tamil Nadu. Hence, the claim is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we performed a reverse image search on Google and found that the same video had been shared earlier, on 24 February 2019, by the BJP Hosur Facebook handle. The video was captioned “Police department’s situation in the area where Muslims live more in Tamil Nadu. Vellore district only at #Vaniyampadi. The police officer is disgraced to this extent.” This indicates that the video is not recent and dates back to 2019.
While digging deeper, we found that the video had recently gone viral again, with claims suggesting it showed a recent incident in Tamil Nadu. However, a clarification issued by the Tirupathur District Police on 27 February 2025 stated that the incident actually took place in 2019, and that some individuals were falsely circulating it as a recent event.
According to the clarification, the video shows a mob troubling an Assistant Inspector of the Vaniyambadi City Police. A Google-translated version of the official post can be seen below. This confirms that the incident occurred in Tamil Nadu in 2019 and has no connection to Murshidabad or the recent protests over the Waqf Bill.
To sum up, a 2019 video from Tamil Nadu showing a mob snatching a mobile phone from a police officer is being falsely shared as linked to the recent Murshidabad protest over the Waqf Bill.
