A May 2024 video of Kanhaiya Kumar being attacked during an election campaign in Delhi is falsely shared as a recent 2025 incident from Bihar
A video of Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar is going viral on social media (here, here, and here). In the video, Kanhaiya is seen surrounded by a large crowd. A man approaches him with a flower garland and, as Kanhaiya bends his head, the man suddenly slaps him while placing the garland. This leads to a brief scuffle. The video is being shared with the claim that Kanhaiya Kumar was recently attacked in Bihar in May 2025. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The video shows Congress leader Kanhaiya Kumar being attacked recently in Bihar in May 2025.
Fact: The video dates back to 17 May 2024 and shows Kanhaiya Kumar being slapped and having ink thrown at him during an election campaign in North East Delhi, not Bihar. No credible reports confirm any such attack on him in Bihar in May 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To verify the claim, we conducted an internet search using relevant keywords. However, we found no credible reports confirming that Kanhaiya Kumar was recently attacked in Bihar in May 2025. With Assembly elections scheduled in the state later this year, political activity has intensified, and all parties have started their preparations. On 15 May 2025, Congress MP Rahul Gandhi visited Bihar for a one-day tour as part of these efforts.
Kanhaiya Kumar is currently leading a programme called Shiksha Nyaya Samvad in Bihar. On 17 May 2025, he also held a protest in front of the BJP headquarters, accusing the government of preventing Rahul Gandhi from meeting students. Given the political significance of these events, any attack on him would likely have received substantial media coverage. However, we found no such reports.
We then performed a reverse image search using keyframes from the viral video, which led us to multiple news report videos from May 2024 (here, here) featuring the same visuals. This confirms that the viral video is old and not from May 2025. According to these reports, Kanhaiya Kumar, the Congress and INDIA bloc candidate from North East Delhi, was assaulted during an election campaign event on 17 May 2024. A youth approached him under the pretext of garlanding him and suddenly slapped him, causing chaos at the scene. The incident occurred in Kartar Nagar, which falls under the Osmanpur police station area of North East Delhi.
We then used relevant keywords and found multiple media reports covering the incident (here, here, and here). According to these reports, along with being slapped, Kanhaiya Kumar also had ink thrown at him by two individuals. Following the attack, his supporters, who were present at the location, caught one of the attackers and beat him up. The attackers were reportedly arrested by the police on 21 May 2024.
To sum up, a May 2024 video of Kanhaiya Kumar being attacked during the election campaign in Delhi is falsely shared as a recent May 2025 video from Bihar.