The historical drama Chhaava, based on Chhatrapati Sambhaji Maharaj, was released in theatres worldwide on 14 February 2025. In this context, a video has gone viral on social media (here, here, and here), showing individuals dressed in black attacking a police vehicle parked on the road. The post is being circulated with claims that the Muslim community in Paris, the capital of France, rioted in protest against the release of Chhaava. Let’s verify the claim made in the post through this article.
Claim: The video shows members of the Muslim community in Paris, the capital of France, rioting in protest against the release of Chhaava.
Fact: The video dates back to 24 January 2021, when individuals in the Pantin area of Paris clashed with the police while filming a rap video. French media reports from January 2021 confirm that the attack occurred during a police search of a vehicle and that the incident was unrelated to any protests. The video has no connection to the release of Chhaava in February 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is FALSE.
We conducted an internet search using relevant keywords to verify the viral claim. However, we found no credible reports confirming that members of the Muslim community in Paris, the capital of France, rioted in protest against the release of Chhaava. Given the significance of such an incident, it would have attracted substantial media coverage, but no such reports were found.
We then performed a reverse image search of the keyframes from the viral video, which led us to an X post by the French media organization Actu17 dated 25 January 2021, featuring the same video. This confirmed that the video is old and unrelated to the release of the film Chhaava. The post stated that some individuals had attacked the police in the Pantin area of Paris.
Taking clues from the X post, we used relevant keywords and found multiple French media reports covering the incident (here and here). According to these reports, the attack on the police occurred on 24 January 2021 while the police were searching a vehicle. The attackers, who were filming a rap video in the same area, clashed with the police. The authorities had to use tear gas to disperse the crowd, and four individuals were arrested in connection with the incident.
We also found the same video posted on the French X handle ‘Commissaires de Police SICP’. The video, posted on 25 January 2021, stated: “Yesterday, a police squad was surrounded by individuals in Villedepentin, in the town of Courtilières, and the policemen were violently attacked.” This confirms that the video is over four years old.
To sum up, an unrelated video from January 2021 is shared as a protest against the release of the Chhaava movie in France in 2025.
