A video is being widely shared on social media claiming it is the visuals of a Dalit being forcefully made to drink water from the shoes of the upper caste people in India. Let’s verify the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of a group of upper caste people making a Dalit person drink water from their shoes.
Fact: The video shared in the post shows an old incident that took place in Rajasthan in 2020. Kaluram Devasi from Bhev village in Rajasthan was kidnapped by a group of men and forcefully made to drink urine and water from a shoe as punishment for allegedly having an affair with a married woman in the village. Kaluram Devasi belongs to the Rebari (Debasi) caste of the OBC community. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
On reverse image search of the screenshots of the video, a video with similar visuals was found published by the Dainik Bhaskar news website in 2020. The article reported it as the visuals of a youth being forcefully made to drink urine and water through shoes by a few men for having an affair with a married woman.
Reporting the complete details of the incident, several news websites published articles in 2020. A few of them can be seen here, here and here. According to the reports, the victim Kaluram Devasi from Bhev village in Rajasthan was kidnapped by a group of men and taken to the agricultural well in Suparna (Sardarpura) village near Sirohi on 11 June 2020. The accused forced the victim to drink urine from a liquor bottle and water from a shoe as punishment for allegedly having an affair with a married woman in the village. After the video had gone viral on social media, police registered the case on 9 men and arrested the six accused involved in this inhuman act.
As per the FIR, the seven men accused in the case and the victim Kaluram belong to the same Rebari (Debasi) caste of the OBC community. Had Kaluram been a Dalit, the accused would have been booked under the Scheduled Caste and Scheduled Tribe (Prevention of Atrocities) Act, 1989. But as per the copy of the FIR, the case was registered under IPC sections 143, 365, 384, 342 and 323. From all these pieces of evidence, it can be concluded that the victim who was forcefully made to drink water through the shoes does not belong to the Dalit community.
To sum it up, an old video of youth being forcefully made to drink urine and water from shoes in Rajasthan is shared now with a misleading narrative.
