Video of group of people attacking a person is being widely shared on social media claiming that five women are fighting with each other over a boyfriend at Sonepur mela, Bihar. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of five women fighting with each other over a boyfriend at Sonepur mela, Bihar.
Fact: This incident in the video was already reported by Punjab Kesari, Ludhiana Kesari and Dainik Bhaskar on 05 October 2022. According to these reports, this video shows a clash between two groups of trangender persons at the Dussehra fair held at Vardhman Maidan, Ludhiana. Though, Dainik Jagran reports it as incident from Hoshiarpur, Punjab, it is evident that this video doesn’t show any recent incident of five women fighting for a boy at Sonepur Mela in Bihar that began in November 2022. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Reverse image search of the keyframes extracted from the viral post led us to a YouTube video uploaded on 04 October 2022. The title of the video is ‘Hoshiarpur Dusshera 2022 Girls Fight’. Visuals of this YouTube video matches with that of the Viral video.
Taking a cue from this, we searched further about this incident and found news reports by Punjab Kesari and Jalandhar Kesari and Dainik Bhaskar dated 05 October 2022.
According to these reports, two groups of transgender persons clashed with each other at the Dussehra fair held at Vardhman Maidan, Ludhiana. It is being told that an argument broke out between them regarding the distribution of the area, after which the fight broke out. As soon as the information about this matter was received, the police reached the spot and pacified both the groups. Dainik Jagran reported this as an incident as from Hoshiarpur, Punjab. Though we couldn’t independently verify the precise location of the incident, the video doesn’t show any recent incident in Bihar as the same video is available since October 2022 while the Sonepur mela began in November 2022.
Several Media outlets like NDTV, India Today, ABP news, Sakshi, TV9, Zee News, Live Hindustan, etc. reported it as an incident of five women fighting for a single boy at ongoing Sonepur Mela in Bihar. Almost all news agencies reported that the incident allegedly took place in Hariharnath Kshetra during the Sonepur mela. However, the 2022 Sonepur mela is being held between 06 November and 07 December 2022, while the is video is available on YouTube since October 2022. The Sonepur Mela is organised every year during Kartika Purnima. The concept of Hariharnath Kshetra Sonepur mela started around the worship of Lord Hariharnath (Vishnu and Shiva) for which people come to Sonepur. This mela is largest cattle fair of Asia. The Sonepur cattle fair is held on Kartik Purnima (the full moon day) in the month of November in Sonepur, Bihar on the confluence of river Ganges and Gandak.
To sum it up, old video of two transgender groups in Punjab fighting over distribution area during Dusshera 2022 is falsely shared as an incident of 5 women fighting for a single boy at Sonepur Mela in Bihar.
