A social media post shares a video that shows armed men beating a group of people after pinning them down on the ground. It claims that the video shows the atrocities of police on unarmed Kuki-Zo villagers. Let’s fact-check this video and the connected claim through this article.
Claim: Visuals showing the police atrocities on unarmed Kuki-ZO villagers in Manipur.
Fact: This video is from March 2022. It shows security personnel beating workers of the NPF (Naga People’s Front) who allegedly vandalised an EVM in a polling booth during the assembly elections in Manipur. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
We watched the video in detail by slowing it down and observed that a few armed men and even the persons they were beating were wearing a mask. Since most people nowadays are not wearing a mask anymore and as the active COVID-19 cases are comparatively fewer, it could mean that the video was shot many months before.
In the pursuit of finding additional details about the original video, we found that BOOM found a video with visuals identical to the viral video with the help of an independent journalist named Linda Chhakchhuak.
This video titled ‘ MLA ELECTION 2nd phase Amun:42/13 saibol polling station, Tengnoupal AC*’ was uploaded on March 2022. You can find the similarities between both videos in the following collage.
Taking this as a hint, we performed a keyword search online, leading us to a few news reports on this incident. Reportedly, six workers of the NPF (Naga People’s Front) were arrested by the Tengnoupal police for allegedly destroying an Electronic Voting Machine and disrupting the polling activities at a polling centre in Tengnoupal Assembly Constituency. You can find the news reports on this incident here, here, and here.
This evidence shows that a video that existed way before the 2023 Manipur violence is being falsely attributed to it. Previously, BOOM and the Quint have also debunked the same video, the details of which you can find here and here.
To sum up, a video from 2022 that shows security personnel beating NPF workers for vandalising a polling booth during the Manipur Assembly elections is falsely shared as visuals showing the atrocities of Police on Kuki-Zo villagers.
