A video is being shared on Facebook with a claim that a Dalit man has been thrashed in Masjid for saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’. The same video was also posted on Twitter with the same description. Let’s try to check the authenticity of the image in the post.
Claim: A Dalit man has been pulled into Masjid and was thrashed for saying ‘Jai Shri Ram’.
Fact: In the video, the man was beaten on the suspicion of phone robbery. He is a Muslim man, not Dalit. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When the screenshots of the video are run through Google Reverse Image Search, a ‘Dainik Bhaskar’ news article containing the same video can be found in the search results. According to that article, the incident took place at Karimpur masjid in Hapur, Uttar Pradesh on 25th May, 2019. The man (Sameer) in the video was beaten by a group of people from Bulandshahr on the suspicion of phone robbery when he went to masjid to offer Namaz.
To sum it up, the man in the video is a Muslim and was beaten on the suspicion of robbing a phone.
Did you watch our new Episode of PAUSE series on Debunking Fake News?
