Old video of police lathi charge at CAA protesters in Gorakhpur is shared as Indian army crackdown on Kashmiris - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
October 12, 2021
A social media post accompanying a video of people being beaten up by men in uniform is being shared with a claim that the video shows the Indian military crackdown on Kashmiris. The post further claims that the Indian government has announced military action on Kashmir and accordingly internet and communications were cut off from the region.  Let’s fact-check the claims made in the post.
Claim: Video showing Indian military crackdown on Kashmiris.
Fact: The video shows police lathi charge at protesters who resorted to pelting stones at police during the anti CAA protests at Nakhas Chowk area in Gorakhpur back in December 2019. Many news agencies have reported the incident. The video has nothing to do with Kashmir. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
Search on Facebook with relevant keywords led us to a post that shared a high resolution and longer version of the same viral video. This post dates back to January 2020 and the description accompanying the video attributes the video to police lathi charge at CAA protests in Uttar Pradesh. Further search led yielded a YouTube video, which carried similar visuals. The video dates back to December 2019 and the description of the video claims that visuals show police action against CAA protests.
Taking a cue from the above-mentioned videos, further search with relevant keywords led us to a 2019 news video of police lathi charge at CAA protests in Gorakhpur. According to this report, police clamped down on protesters who resorted to pelting stones at police during the anti CAA protests at Nakhas Chowk area in Gorakhpur. This video captures the same police lathi charge from a different angle.
Upon juxtaposing few visuals of this news report with that of the Facebook video, which is a better version of the viral video, we can spot a few similarities in both these images, which proves that the viral video is related to CAA protests back in 2019 and has nothing to do with Kashmir.
Following the passage of the Citizenship Amendment Bill in Parliament, protests opposing the bill have been reported in many parts of the country and in Uttar Pradesh back in 2019. News articles that reported protests in cities like Gorakhpur, Bulandshahr, and Muzaffarnagar can be read here, here, and here.
The second part of the video wherein an old person is seen giving an emotional speech has been available on the internet since September 2019. YouTube uploads of the longer version of the same video can be seen here and here. In this longer version, the person states that he had worked with the Indian Army and talks about the atrocities carried by the Indian Army against Kashmiri women. However, we could not independently verify the location and the context around the speech of the video,
To sum it up, the 2019 video of police lathi charge at CAA protesters in Gorakhpur is shared as Indian army crackdown on Kashmiris.