A video (here and here) has recently gone viral on social media, which allegedly shows the poor situation of Hindus in West Bengal. In the video, we can see a mob chasing and thrashing a few men. It is claimed that the video shows a few Rohingya men jumping, kicking, and punching Hindus. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: A recent video of Rohingyas kicking and punching BJP workers in West Bengal.
Fact: This video is from an incident that took place in West Bengal’s Darjeeling in 2017. It shows Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJP) activists attacking West Bengal BJP President Dilip Ghosh in Darjeeling in 2017. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a reverse image search on a few of its keyframes, leading us to a video news report (archive link) uploaded on a verified YouTube channel named ‘NMF News,’ which contained the same visuals. However, this video was uploaded on 6 October 2017, making the viral claim of this being a recent incident invalid.
As per news reports (here, here, and here), this incident took place in Darjeeling, West Bengal. In 2017, the then BJP Bengal President Dilip Ghosh visited Darjeeling for a public meeting when “..people from the Benoy Tamang faction of the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha (GJM) roughed up BJP workers accompanying Ghosh minutes after forcing him to cancel a public meeting.” As per the news reports, the conflict here was between BJP workers and people belonging to the Gorkha Janmukti Morcha, not Rohingyas.
Further, we performed a keyword search on the internet to know of any incident of Rohingyas attacking Hindus or BJP workers in West Bengal. This search did not yield any results that support the viral claim, making it clear that an old video is now being shared as a recent incident of Rohingyas attacking Hindus in West Bengal.
To sum up, an old video is now being shared with a false narrative of a Rohingya-Hindu conflict in West Bengal.
