Debunked photo revived again as a photo of poor labourer beaten up during the COVID-19 lockdown - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
March 23, 2021
A photo of a man with injuries is being shared on social media with a claim – ‘If the rich people who have escaped the screening at airports were lathi-charged in a similar way, then the poor labourers would have escaped this plight’ (English translation). Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Photo of a poor labourer beaten during the COVID-19 lockdown.
Fact: The posted photo is not related to the COVID-19 lockdown. The same photo is being shared on the internet at least since December 2017 i.e., much before the discovery of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown due to the pandemic in 2020. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the image was run through Google Reverse Image Search, many similar images were found in the search results. Several users have posted the same photo and other photos related to the incident. Those posts can be found seen here, here, and here. But it can be observed that those photos were posted in December 2017 i.e., much before the discovery of COVID-19 and the subsequent lockdown due to the pandemic in 2020.
The social media posts and news blogs in 2017 have mentioned that the photos are related to an incident in Dhaka. While we could not independently verify that claim, it can be concluded that the photos are not related to the COVID-19 induced lockdown in India. When the same photo along with another photo went viral in 2020 with a similar claim, FACTLY has debunked it and written a fact-check article, which can be read here.
While the photo in the post is not related to the COVID-19 lockdown, some of the reports regarding migrant labourers getting beaten up by the police during the COVID-19 lockdown in India can be read here, here, and here.
To sum it up, the photo does not show a poor labourer beaten up during the COVID-19 lockdown. The same photo is being shared on the internet at least since December 2017.