A video of a man hitting a person with a cane is doing the rounds on social media with a claim that the person seen thrashing is a BJP MLA named Vipul Dube from Uttar Pradesh. The post’s description claims that he assaulted the person because he asked him for his salary. We fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: Viral video shows a BJP MLA from UP, Vipul Dube, assaulting his employee for asking for his salary.
Fact: This is an old video, reportedly from April 2022. Police identified the accused as Pratik Tiwari and the victim as Rajiv Bharadwaj. The accused seen in the video is not a BJP MLA, according to the police. Hence, the claim made in the post is False.
To check the veracity of the viral claim, we performed a search on the internet with keywords related to the video. This search fetched many news reports (here and here) related to the viral video from April 2022.
As per the news reports, the incident took place in Uttar Pradesh’s Shahjahanpur, where a man identified as Pratik Tiwari hit a person named Rajiv Bharadwaj with a cane and made him sit in a ‘Murgi’ position for not revealing to him details (here and here) about a person who works under him.
When the video went viral in 2022, the police filed a case (here and here) against Pratik and his accomplices. We could not independently verify whether Pratik Tiwari is associated with the BJP.
Furthermore, the police told Vishvas News back in March 2024 that none of the accused seen in the viral video was an MLA.
To sum up, an old video from 2022 is being falsely shared as a recent video of a BJP MLA named Vipul Dube thrashing his employee for asking for his salary.
