Varanasi Councillor's abduction by locals in 2020 is now being shared with a misleading narrative - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
July 5, 2022
A video through a post is being shared widely on social media claiming that a group of people abducted their ward councillor for not visiting their ward after getting elected. Let’s fact-check the claim made in this post.
Claim: A group of people abducted their ward councillor for neglecting the issues, and not visiting the ward after getting elected.
Fact: This incident took place in November 2020 in Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh. The Councillor for Ward No. 79 of Varanasi Municipal Corporation was unable to resolve the sewage water-logging issue in Ambiya Mandi. As a result, locals abducted the councillor and demanded the instant resolution of the issue. Hence, the claim made in the post is MISLEADING.
We ran the reverse image search of the screenshots from the viral video and found some posts with other descriptions too. They can be seen here and  here. Several media reports regarding the same incident can be found here, here, and here.
According to these reports, the incident took place in November,2020 in the city of Varanasi, Uttar Pradesh, India. The restrained person is identified as Tufail Ansari, Councillor of ward No. 79 of the Varanasi Municipal Corporation.
What actually happened?
There had been severe water logging issues in the streets of Ambiya Mandi (an area under Ward No. 79) for the past 2-4 months due to improper sewage water management. Despite several complaints, the issue was still unresolved. The enraged locals abducted Tufail Ansari, while he was roaming in the streets and made him sit in the middle of the sewage water by tying him to a chair for almost an hour. They raised slogans against the local administration for its negligence in solving problems.
In this video, we can see the visuals of locals talking to media about the same issue and the clip of Tufail Ansari being tied to chair, surrounded by sewage water. Moreover, the elections for Varanasi Municipal Corporation were held in 2017 and next elections will be in 2022. So, the Councillor was clearly not campaigning for the upcoming elections.
To sum it up, Varanasi Councillor’s abduction by locals in 2020 is now being shared with misleading narrative