On 04 September 2025, Nepal banned 26 social media platforms, sparking youth protests from 08 September that left 72 dead and over 2,100 injured. PM K. P. Sharma Oli resigned on 09 September; Sushila Karki became interim PM, with elections set for 05 March 2026. The army was deployed, and compensation and medical aid were announced for victims (here, here, and here).
Amidst this, a video showing police lathi-charging people dressed in white kurtas and red caps is circulating on social media (here, here, and here). The posts claim that the visuals show a recent incident and depict police action against Samajwadi Party workers protesting in Uttar Pradesh, drawing comparisons to the ongoing situation in Nepal. Let’s verify the claim made in the post in this article.
Claim: The video shows a September 2025 incident of police lathi-charging Samajwadi Party workers protesting in Uttar Pradesh.
Fact: The video is not from September 2025. It dates back to July 2021, when police lathi-charged Samajwadi Party workers in Prayagraj during a protest over alleged irregularities in the District Panchayat President election. There is no credible information or media report of a police lathi-charge on Samajwadi Party (SP) workers in Uttar Pradesh in September 2025. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
To verify the claim, we searched online but found no credible information or media reports of a police lathi-charge on Samajwadi Party (SP) workers in Uttar Pradesh in September 2025.
We then conducted a reverse image search of key frames from the viral video, which led us to an X post by the Samajwadi Party, dated 03 July 2021, which carried the same visuals and stated that it showed a brutal police lathi-charge on SP workers in Prayagraj.
Taking cues from the X post, we conducted a Google search using relevant keywords and came across several media reports (here, here, and here) from July 2021 carrying the same visuals. According to these reports, Samajwadi Party workers in Prayagraj were protesting against alleged irregularities in the counting of votes for the District President election. At the same time, voting was underway for the District Panchayat President election in Uttar Pradesh. The Samajwadi Party accused the ruling BJP of using a device to fraudulently rig votes and staged a sit-in protest near Anand Hospital intersection in the city. After the BJP candidate’s victory, when police attempted to disperse the protesters gathered outside the barricades, a clash broke out, prompting the police to resort to a lathi-charge. SP workers alleged vote rigging and demanded a re-election. This confirms that the video is from 2021 and has no connection to any recent protests in India or the situation in Nepal.
To sum up, the video showing police lathi-charging SP workers in U.P. is from July 2021, not September 2025.
