Old video of police forcing men to sing national anthem during Delhi riots is attributed to Indian army in Kashmir - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
January 20, 2022
A social media post accompanying a video of police personnel forcing men to sing the National Anthem is being widely circulated with a claim that Indian army soldiers in Kashmir forced these men to sing for raising pro-Pakistan slogans. In the video, the police personnel can be seen manhandling a group of young men, as they were lying on the road with injuries. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video showing Indian soldiers in Kashmir forcing men sing the national anthem in response for their pro-Pakistan slogans.
Fact: The video actually shows Delhi police forcing a group of men to sing the national anthem during the Delhi riots which took place in early 2020. The video went viral on social media back then. As per the news reports, one of the men shown in the video succumbed to injuries. Recently, the High Court of Delhi questioned the delay in investigation. The video has nothing to do with Kashmir. Hence the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
Reverse image search of the screenshots of the video yielded multiple 2020 news reports which reported the same visuals. As per one such news report, the video shows an incident wherein Delhi police personnel forced a group of men to sing the national anthem during the Delhi riots, in February 2020. As per the report, the video went viral on social media platforms back then. News articles that have reported the incident back then can be viewed here and here.
Further, according to the news report, one of the five men injured had succumbed to the injuries. And the victim’s mother ‘had filed a petition in the Delhi High Court to have the matter investigated by a Special Investigation Team (SIT)’.
The incident has been in the news once again, as the Delhi High Court on 12 January 2022 ‘questioned the delay in investigating an incident where a man, 23-year-old Faizan, was forced to sing the national anthem during the Delhi riots that erupted in the year 2020’.
Another news article that reported the latest development in the case can be read here. In the latest hearing of this case in Delhi High court on 11 January 2022, the police were directed to file a detailed comprehensive status report on the investigation till now on the death of the 23-year-old Faizan, in FIR No.75/2020.
Back in 2020 when the video went viral on social media, Alt News has independently verified the veracity of the location and context of the video by speaking to one of the victims, who confirmed that the incident happened during the Delhi riots in early 2020. From all this, it is evident that the video has nothing to do with Kashmir.
To sum it up, an old video of police forcing men to sing the national anthem during the Delhi riots passed off attributing it to the Indian army in Kashmir.