A post accompanying the video of a mob thrashing a man is being shared on social media platforms with a claim that the video shows people thrashing a kidnaper in the presence of police who is one among the four hundred who have arrived in Salem to abduct small children. Through this article, let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: People thrashing a kidnapper in Salem, Tamil Nadu who came to abduct small children.
Fact: The video actually shows people thrashing a miscreant who under the influence of alcohol tried to abduct a school-going girl at Thanjavur old bus stand back in 2019. Multiple Tamil regional news agencies have reported the incident. The video has nothing to do with Salem. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Reverse image search of the screenshots of the video in the post yielded few 2019 Tamil regional news articles which published images similar to the screenshots of the video. According to one such news article, the image represents an incident wherein a miscreant under the influence of alcohol tried to abduct a school-going girl at Thanjavur’s old bus stand. However, people who were present at the scene resisted the move and thrashed him, and handed him over to the police.
Another news article that reported the video stated that a man who tried to abduct a girl at Thanjavur’s old bus stand was attacked by people present at the place. Another news article that reported the incident can be read here. By all these, we can conclude that the video is related to an incident that occured in Thanjavur back in 2019 and has nothing to do with Salem.
To sum it up, an old video from Thanjavur is passed off as people catching hold of a member of a kidnapping gang in Salem.
