Farmers protesting against the three farm laws have organised a rally in Uttar Pradesh’s Muzaffarnagar earlier this month. It is in this light, a Facebook post accompanying a video of a group of Muslim men, among which one can be seen ladling out food and blowing over it before putting it back into the container is being shared. It is being alleged that the man spit on the food which was to be served to protesting farmers at Muzaffarnagar rally. Let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a Muslim man spitting over food, which was to be served to protesting farmers.
Fact: This video was uploaded on YouTube back in 2018, much before the introduction of the three farm bills which the farmers are protesting against. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
The same video was uploaded on YouTube back in December 2018, with a Malayalam title which loosely translates to ‘those who don’t understand barkat of Islam, they should not eat food that is spit on’. Although the original video is deleted from YouTube, the archived version of the video can be seen here.
Further, there are no news reports of such an incident wherein a Muslim spit on food served to protesting farmers during recently concluded Muzaffarnagar rally. Although we could not independently verify the context of the video, the presence of the video on the internet since 2018 proves that the video has nothing to do with the Muzaffarnagar farmers rally, or for that matter the farmers protest, as the new farm bills which the farmers are protesting against had not been introduced by then.
The same video went viral on social media with different claims in the past when a few fact-checkers debunked the video, which can be read here and here.
To sum it up, an old video passed off as Muslims spitting on food served to farmers in the Muzaffarnagar rally.
