A video of a mob beating up a man for having an illicit relationship is being shared with a false Christian conversion narrative
A video (here, here, and here) of a man being beaten by a mob is going viral on social media. It is being claimed that members of a Hindutva group thrashed him for converting to Christianity. Let’s verify this claim through this article.
Claim: This video shows a Hindutva mob thrashing a man for converting to Christianity.
Fact: This incident took place in 2022 in Sangareddy, Telangana and it has no religious conversion angle. As per news reports, a man named Begari Naresh was thrashed by a mob for having an illicit relationship with a married woman. Hence, the claim made in the post are False.
To check the veracity of the claim, we performed a reverse image search using some key frames from the viral video. This led us to an ‘X’ post from July 2022 by a person named ‘Suraj Kumar Bauddh.’ According to this post, this incident happened in Sangareddy, Telangana.
Taking this as a clue, we performed a keyword search on the internet and found various news reports (here, here, and here) related to this incident. According to these reports, this incident took place in the Chelemamidi village of Jharasangam Mandal in Sangareddy, Telangana, in July 2022.
A group of people in Chelemamidi village reportedly thrashed a Dalit man for having an illicit relationship with a woman belonging to their caste. The man, Begari Naresh, and his family members were injured during this attack. Back in 2022, the video of this incident went viral on the internet.
Furthermore, both the groups involved in this incident filed cases against each other. You can see those FIR copies here and here. Reportedly, nine accused were arrested by the police and sent to judicial remand for 14 days.
To sum up, a video of an incident that took place two years ago is being shared with a false religious conversion narrative.