Over the past few days, reports have circulated that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) plans to launch a campaign to distribute vermilion (sindoor) to women at their homes, promoting the success of Operation Sindoor. However, on 30 May 2025, the government dismissed these claims as fake.
In this context, a video is going viral on social media (here, here, and here) with the claim that in Bihar, Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) officials who went to distribute vermilion were beaten up and chased away by women. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The video shows BJP workers in Bihar being beaten up and chased away by women while distributing vermilion (sindoor) after the success of Operation Sindoor in 2025.
Fact: The viral video dates back to October 2020, and shows an incident that took place during the Bihar Assembly Elections. It shows the BJP candidate from Kudhni, Kedar Prasad Gupta, being opposed by villagers in Muzaffarpur. Women and locals reportedly expressed anger over poor development work, abused the campaigners, tore down posters, and asked them to leave. The incident has no connection to Operation Sindoor, which occurred in May 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
A reverse image search of keyframes from the viral video led us to several social media posts (here, here, and here) from October 2020, which featured an extended version of the video. This confirms that the viral footage predates Operation Sindoor by several years. According to these posts, the video was recorded in the Kudhni area of Muzaffarpur, where women reportedly abused and chased away BJP MLA Kedar Prasad Gupta’s election campaign vehicle upon its arrival in a village. At the beginning of the footage, a man can be heard mentioning Kedar Gupta’s name, and posters reading ‘Atmanirbhar Bihar’ are visible on the vehicle, which the villagers later tear down.
Taking clues from social media posts, we used relevant keywords and found that the incident, along with the same video, was reported (archived) by Headlines Bihar on 24 October 2020.
We also came across a report published on Jansatta’s website covering the same incident. According to these reports, during the 2020 Bihar Assembly Elections, when BJP candidate from Kudhni, Kedar Prasad Gupta, entered a village in his campaign vehicle, the villagers expressed anger over the lack of development work. They reportedly abused him and asked him to leave the village.
At that time, Assembly elections were being held in Bihar, and the BJP had nominated Kedar Prasad Gupta as its candidate from the Kudhni constituency. He lost the election, but won in the 2022 by-elections for the same seat.
To sum up, an October 2020 video from the Bihar election campaign is shared as BJP workers being confronted for distributing vermilion after Operation Sindoor in 2025.
