Jyoti Malhotra, a travel vlogger and YouTuber from Haryana, was arrested by Hisar police on 17 May 2025 on charges of espionage for Pakistan. Reports allege that she shared sensitive information related to India with Pakistan’s intelligence agency using encrypted platforms such as WhatsApp, Telegram, and Snapchat (here, here, and here).
In this context, a video showing a woman being beaten up is going viral on social media (here, here, and here). It is being shared with the claim that the woman in the video is Jyothi Malhotra and that she was assaulted when she appeared for a court hearing. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The video shows Jyoti Malhotra being assaulted by people when she appeared for a court hearing.
Fact: The viral video is unrelated to Jyoti Malhotra. It shows a woman being assaulted in Dhanmondi, Bangladesh, on 06 February 2025, during protests against the demolition of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman’s residence. Multiple Bangladeshi media outlets confirm the video’s origin and incident. Meanwhile, Jyoti Malhotra was arrested on 17 May 2025 in Hisar and produced in court on 22 and 26 May 2025, but no reports of her assault were found. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To verify the claim, we conducted an internet search using relevant keywords and found that Jyoti Malhotra was produced in the Hisar court on 22 May 2025. After the hearing, her police remand was extended by four days. On 26 May 2025, the Hisar court remanded YouTuber Jyoti Malhotra to 14 days’ judicial custody following the conclusion of her police remand in an alleged espionage case. However, no credible reports confirm that she was assaulted during the hearing.
We then performed a reverse image search of key frames from the viral video, which led us to an X post featuring the same video dated 11 May 2025, predating the arrest of YouTuber Jyothi Malhotra on 17 May 2025. The video was claimed to be from Bangladesh.
Based on clues from the X post, we used relevant Bangla keywords and found multiple Bangladeshi media reports (here, here, and here) featuring the same visuals. According to these reports, the incident occurred on 6 February 2025 in Dhanmondi, Bangladesh. A woman was allegedly assaulted for opposing the demolition of ‘Dhanmondi 32’, the official residence of Bangabandhu Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. She was reportedly labelled an Awami League agent by a mob angered by her protest.
According to multiple Bangladeshi media reports (here, here, here, and here), the woman in the video was allegedly assaulted by a mob after she was seen speaking in support of the Awami League near Dhanmondi 32, the residence of Sheikh Mujibur Rahman. A video of the incident was also shared on the official Facebook page of the Bangladesh Awami League, stating that she was harassed for opposing the demolition of Dhanmondi 32.
In February 2025, the residence of Bangladesh’s founder, Sheikh Mujibur Rahman, located at Dhanmondi 32, was attacked. Sheikh Hasina addressed the nation via social media, urging citizens to oppose the current regime. In response, protesters announced a bulldozer march in Dhanmondi as a form of demonstration (here, here, and here).
To sum up, an old, unrelated video from Bangladesh is falsely being shared as footage of Jyoti Malhotra being assaulted during a court hearing.
