A video (here, here) is going viral on social media with a claim that it shows some Congress members’ clothes catching fire while burning an effigy of Prime Minister Narendra Modi in Karnataka. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows a recent incident in which the clothes of five Congress members caught fire while burning an effigy of Prime Minister Modi in Karnataka.
Fact: This video shows an incident that happened in 2012 when some students belonging to the Kerala Students Union (KSU) in Pathanamthitta, Kerala, torched an effigy of MG University’s Vice-Chancellor on fire. It has nothing to do with PM Modi’s effigy or Karnataka. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
After extracting some key frames of the viral video and performing a reverse image search, we found a Facebook video (archive link) from 2012 that has the same visuals as the viral video. The title of that video is ‘Funny Incident During Protest In Kerala. Lungi Catches Fire…’ This means a video from almost 12 years ago is going viral, claiming it as a recent video.
After further search on the internet using relevant keywords, we found a news report (archive link) of ‘Asianet News’ dated July 2012.
According to this video report, the incident took place in Pathanamthitta, Kerala. As part of a protest by some Kerala Students Union (KSU), a few students burnt an effigy of MG University’s Vice-Chancellor. During this process, some of their clothes caught fire. The same incident was also mentioned in a news article dated 2012.
Additionally, we searched the internet to see if any such incidents were reported in Karnataka recently, but we did not find any.
To sum up, a video of an incident that took place in Kerala in 2012 is falsely shared as a recent video of some Congress members’ clothes catching fire in Karnataka when they were burning an effigy of Prime Minister Modi.
