A video through a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that a Dalit man is being beaten in Uttar Pradesh. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a Dalit man beaten in Uttar Pradesh.
Fact: The video is from Shahjahanpur district in Uttar Pradesh. However, the victim who was being beaten up in the video is Rajiv Bharadwaj, who is not a Dalit. Though the video went viral recently, the incident is from 13 March 2022. Shahjahanpur Police registered an FIR on 16 April 2022. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, the same video was shared by the official Twitter handle of the Samajwadi Party. According to their tweet, a BJP leader was seen beating a person in Shahjahanpur in Uttar Pradesh. There was no mention of any Dalit man being beaten here. Responding to this tweet, Sanjay Kumar, Addl. Superintendent of Police, Shahjahanpur Police said that the accused is Prateek Tiwari, and the victim is Rajiv Bharadwaj; there was no mention of any Dalit man being beaten up.
When we searched online with relevant keywords, multiple news articles were found about the same incident. The video had gone viral on social media recently, criticising the Yogi government for its inaction, and the state’s performance in law & order. According to news articles, the person beating the victim is Prateek Tiwari, and the victim’s name is Rajiv Bharadwaj. In these articles, nowhere is it mentioned that the person being beaten is a Dalit.
On 16 April 2022, regarding the incident, an FIR had been registered at Sadar Bazar Police Station, Shahjahanpur District, Uttar Pradesh. According to the FIR, the date of the incident is more than a month ago, on 13 March 2022. The name of the complainant is given as Rajiv Bharadwaj, the main accused being Prateek Tiwari. Further, the case has not been registered under any of the sections of ‘The Scheduled Castes and the Scheduled Tribes (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989’, confirming that the victim is not a dalit.
To sum it up, the person who was beaten in this video is not a Dalit; the video is from Shahjahanpur, UP.
