A decade-old video of Russian Hare Krishna devotees’ public brawl with Goa police is being shared with a misleading narrative
Many Facebook users are sharing a post with a video alleging that West Bengal Police have attacked ISKCON members for selling Bhagavad Gita. Let’s try to analyze the claims made in the post.
Claim: West Bengal Police have attacked ISKCON members for selling Bhagavad Gita.
Fact: It is a 2008 video taken when a group of Russian members of the Hare Ram Hare Krishna group entered into a public brawl with the Goa police. So, the claim in the post is MISLEADING.
When the video in the post is run through Invid plugin, several YouTube links of the same video were obtained. The titles of a few YouTube results refer to this incident to have taken place in Goa. So, when googled with keywords “Hare Krishna devotees fight with Goa police”, a Reddit article was found. With the information from the reddit thread, we refined our search and found an article published by “heraldgoa.in” on November 26, 2008. The persons in the photo of this article and the ones seen in the video posted are one and the same. As per the article, when a group of Russian members of the Hare Ram Hare Krishna group were singing religious chants in public, the police of Mapusa (a Goa town) region obstructed them. Due to this, the devotees entered into an argument with the police which later on led to a fight between them. In fact, many such videos are available on YouTube that make it clear that the event took place in Goa. You can watch them here, here and here.
Multiple Goan newspapers also reported the incident when it occurred in 2008.
To sum it up, a decade-old video of Russian Hare Krishna devotees’ public brawl with Goa Police is being shared as West Bengal Police attack on ISKCON members for selling Bhagavad Gita.