A film shoot video from Karnataka is falsely shared as real visuals of police beating Dalits over caste tensions
A video (here, here and here) going viral on social media shows police beating a group of men wearing only undergarments in the middle of a crowded road. The video is being shared with the claim that the men are Dalits who allegedly harassed upper-caste individuals on Instagram, and the police are assaulting them for that reason. Let’s find the truth behind this video.
Claim: The video shows police brutally beating Dalits on the road to protect upper-caste interests.
Fact: The video is not real. It is behind-the-scenes footage from the film Deadly Soma 2, shot in Karnataka. Multiple angles of the shoot were shared by a Kannada entertainment page, confirming it was part of a movie production, not a real incident. Hence the claim is FALSE.
To verify the truth behind the video, we closely examined the visuals and noticed that the boards and signs in the background were written in Kannada, indicating that the incident likely took place in Karnataka. Following this clue, we conducted a keyword search for a similar incident in Karnataka. However, no credible news reports or sources confirmed the claims made in the viral posts.
Further, we performed a reverse image search on Google, which led us to the same video uploaded on 15 April 2025 by the YouTube channel ‘Kannada Pichhar’, a page known for posting movie-related content. The video was captioned “Deadly Soma 2 Movie Exclusive Making,” indicating that the viral clip is actually from a movie shoot. We also noticed that all versions of the viral video carry the watermark of ‘Kannada Pichhar’, further confirming its origin.
Another video uploaded by the Kannada Pichhar Instagram handle on 15 April 2025 shows a different angle of the same viral incident. This version includes earlier shots where men in undergarments are seen running on the road, followed by police officers who later beat them in the middle of the street. Throughout the video, cinematographers and the filming crew can be seen around, confirming it’s part of a staged shoot. The caption, written in Kannada, translates to: “Policemen who stripped and beat a man in City Market | Deadly Soma 2 movie exclusive making video,” clearly indicating that the scenes are from a movie shoot and not a real incident.
A side-by-side comparison between the viral video and the one shared by the Kannada Pichhar account confirms that both were shot at the same location, and identical buildings and surroundings can be clearly seen in both clips. This further establishes that the viral footage is part of the same incident, which is a film shoot. Additionally, we found multiple similar videos from the movie Deadly Soma 2 being circulated across different platforms (here, here and here), further confirming that the scene is from a movie set and not a real event.
To sum up, a film shoot video from Karnataka is falsely shared as real footage of police beating Dalits over caste tensions.