A video (here, here, and here) is being shared on social media claiming that a man set himself on fire trying to burn PM Modi’s effigy. It is being shared with a description in Hindi that translates to “In Kanpur, UP, the man in the red cap — a Samajwadi Party worker — almost ended up burning himself while trying to burn an effigy of Modi.” We will fact-check this claim through this article.
Claim: The video shows a Samajwadi Party(SP) worker accidentally setting himself on fire while trying to burn PM Modi’s effigy.
Fact: The man in the video does belong to the Samajwadi Party (SP). He tried to commit suicide after SP lost the 2022 UP Assembly elections. He didn’t accidentally set fire to himself as said in the post; he did it on purpose. Hence, the claim made in the post is Misleading.
To check the veracity of the claim, we performed a reverse image search on Google using a few keyframes from the viral video. This search led us to news reports (here, here, and here) about this incident, which revealed that the incident took place in Uttar Pradesh in March 2022.
According to a report published by ‘India Today’ on 10 March 2022, the man in the video is Narendra Singh alias Pintu Thakur, who is affiliated with the Samajwadi Party (SP). He attempted suicide after the SP lost the 2022 UP assembly elections.
As mentioned in the post, he did not accidentally set himself on fire while trying to burn an effigy of PM Modi (here and here). He set himself on fire on purpose. Narendra Singh told ‘ETV Bharat’ in March 2022 that the reason Akhilesh Yadav lost the election was BJP changed the EVMs.
Moreover, if you watch the longer version of the viral video (here and here), you can see Narendra Singh pouring petrol on himself from a bottle. In another video available on ‘X’, he can be seen setting himself on fire.
To sum up, a video of a Samajwadi Party worker’s self-immolation bid is shared as he accidentally burns himself while torching a Modi effigy.
