A video showing police dispersing a crowd with a lathi charge, in which a woman sits on the road after being lathi-charged, patting her head and screaming in pain, is going viral on social media. The claim accompanying the video suggests that it shows RJD spokesperson Kanchana Yadav being thrashed by the police (here, here, here, and here). This article aims to fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: The video shows RJD spokesperson Kanchana Yadav being beaten by the police.
Fact: The woman featured in the viral video is not RJD national spokesperson Kanchana Yadav. The video actually shows a woman named Jyothi being lathi-charged by the police in Maddur, Mandya, Karnataka, on 08 September 2025, during a protest rally by pro-Hindu organisations following an alleged stone-pelting incident on a Ganesh Visarjan procession in Maddur on 07 September 2025. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To obtain details about the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using key frames from the clip. This search led us to multiple news reports by Kannada media outlets, which feature photos of the same woman (here, here, here, here, and here). According to these reports, the woman in the viral video has been identified as Jyothi, a resident of Shivapura, Maddur, Mandya district, Karnataka.
The reports further stated that she was protesting alongside pro-Hindu organisations following an alleged stone-pelting incident during the Ganesh Visarjan (immersion) procession in Maddur, Mandya. During this protest rally, the police lathi-charged to disperse the protesters, and subsequently, an FIR was registered against Jyothi on charges of making derogatory remarks against the Karnataka Chief Minister and Muslims during the protest rally.
We then visited the Karnataka Police website and accessed two FIRs filed against Jyothi (here, here). According to these FIRs, the protest rally during which Jyothi was lathi-charged by the police took place on 08 September 2025. As per the FIRs, Jyothi, also known as Jyothigowda or Sanya, is 35 years old, works at a petrol pump, and currently resides in Shivapura, Maddur Town, Mandya.
Additionally, we found an X (formerly Twitter) post by RJD spokesperson Kanchana Yadav, in which she shared a fact-check video published by a fact-checking organisation debunking the viral video. A comparison between the woman featured in the viral video and RJD national spokesperson Kanchana Yadav can be seen below. From all this, it is clear that the woman in the viral video is not RJD national spokesperson Kanchana Yadav.
To sum it up, this viral video shows a woman named Jyothi being lathi-charged by police in Maddur, Mandya, Karnataka, not RJD spokesperson Kanchana Yadav.
