The new criminal laws in India have come into force from 1 July 2024 (here, here, and here). In this context, a video(here and here) has gone viral on social media claiming that a police officer was arrested by a lawyer for taking a bribe, and that this was made possible by the newly implemented criminal laws. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The video shows a police officer arrested by a lawyer under the rules and power provided by the new Indian criminal laws that came into effect from 01 July 2024.
Fact: This video shows an incident from Uttar Pradesh’s Lucknow in 2023, much before the news criminal laws were implemented on 1 July 2024. It shows a police inspector named Pradeep Pandey being arrested by the anti-corruption department of Uttar Pradesh after he was caught red-handed while accepting a bribe in the BKP police station area. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To verify the authenticity of the viral claim, we conducted a reverse image search on several keyframes from the viral video. This search led us to a longer version of the viral video, that was uploaded a year ago on YouTube on 17 June 2023. The title of this video indicated that the incident occurred in the BKT police station area in Lucknow, Uttar Pradesh.
A further search based on the hints from this YouTube video led us to news reports (here, here, and here) from 2023, which detailed the incident.
As per the reports, a police inspector named Pradeep Pandey, posted in the Bakshi ka Talab police station in Lucknow, was arrested after being caught red-handed by the anti-corruption department in June 2023. Pandey, a Sub-Inspector with the Uttar Pradesh Police, demanded a sum of 25,000 rupees from a victim during a land related case.
The timeline of this incident and the implementation of the new criminal laws (here, here, and here) do not coincide, which means the viral post spreads a false narrative by linking the old incident to the news laws.
To sum up, this video is old and does not show a police officer being arrested by a lawyer under India’s newly implemented criminal laws.
