An unrelated video from Chhattisgarh is shared to falsely claim that it shows lawyers beating a man for vandalising Ambedkar’s statue in Amritsar
On 26 January 2025, a man attempted to vandalise the statue of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar near the Golden Temple on Amritsar’s Heritage Street. In this context, a video has gone viral on social media (here, here, and here), claiming that the accused in this incident was beaten up by lawyers in court. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: A video shows lawyers attacking the person accused of attempting to vandalise Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s statue in Amritsar, in the court.
Fact: This viral video is unrelated to the incident that took place in Amritsar on 26 January 2025, where a man attempted to vandalise Dr. B.R. Ambedkar’s statue. The viral video actually shows lawyers attacking an accused inside a court premises in Raipur. On 16 January 2025, an FIR was filed in Raipur against Ajay Singh for attacking senior lawyers. On 17 January 2025, when the police brought him to court, he was assaulted. Following this, an FIR was also registered against the lawyers involved in the attack on Ajay Singh. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To get more information about the incident that took place on 26 January 2025, we searched on the internet using relevant keywords and found several news reports (here, & here) (archived here, & here). According to these reports, on 26 January 2025, a man named Akashdeep Singh attempted to vandalise the statue of Dr. B.R. Ambedkar near the Golden Temple on Heritage Street in Amritsar. He climbed the ladder placed to garland the statue on Republic Day, but security staff from the Tourism Department who noticed he was carrying a hammer, immediately apprehended him and handed him over to the Kotwali (Division E) police. Harsandeep Singh, in charge of Kotwali police station, confirmed that the accused was arrested and a case was registered.
We also accessed the FIR copy related to this case.
To verify the viral video of lawyers beating a man in court, we did a reverse image search of the keyframes which led us to a news report by ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ (archived) featuring the same video from a different angle. The report revealed that the incident took place in a Raipur court.
We identified a few similarities between the viral video and the visuals in the news report by Dainik Bhaskar. The comparison can be seen below.
We found several other media reports covering this incident (here, here, & here) (archived here, here, & here). According to these reports, a youth named Ajay Singh was beaten by lawyers at the Raipur court premises. He was accused of attacking the lawyers. The police stated that Ajay Singh had attacked senior lawyer Dirgesh Sharma on 16 January 2025. Following this, the lawyers filed a complaint at the Khamtarai police station, leading to the arrest of the accused. Later, on 17 January 2025, when the police took the accused to court, he was attacked while in their custody.
We also accessed the FIR copy related to this case. According to the FIR, on the morning of 16 January 2025, when Manoj Kumar Singh and Dirgesh Kumar Sharma were at the Narmadeshwar Mahadev Temple in Sivanand City, Raipur, Manoj’s brother-in-law, Ajay Singh, arrived there, started abusing Manoj over an old dispute, and then attacked and injured them.
Following the incident of lawyers beating Ajay Singh at the Raipur court premises, another FIR was registered against the lawyers at the Civil Lines police station.
To sum up, an unrelated video from Chhattisgarh is shared to falsely claim that it shows lawyers beating a man for vandalising Ambedkar’s statue in Amritsar.