Video of a street food vendor adding his urine to water is shared with a false communal narrative - FACTLY
Sai Krishna Muthyanolla
August 30, 2021
A video accompanied by a post is being widely shared on social media claiming that the person adding his urine to water is a Muslim. The post even claims that the person urinated in a jug and then added this to drinking water. Let us fact-check the claim made in the post.
Claim: Video of muslim street food vendor adding his urine to drinking water.
Fact: According to the officials at Bharalumukh Police Station in Guwahati, the person in the video is a Hindu and not a Muslim. A ‘Puchka’ (Panipuri) vendor was arrested in Guwahati after the video went viral on social media where he was seen adding his urine into a vessel. The accused was arrested by Bharalumukh police and was identified as Akrul Sahini. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
When reverse image search is done on the screenshots of the video, an article with the same image was found. The article published on 19 August 2021 was titled, “Guwahati: Street Food Hawker Picked Up By Police For Allegedly Urinating On Utensils.” According to the article, with the video going viral online, the Guwahati police took cognisance of the matter and picked up the street food hawker. The hawker’s identity was not revealed till then, and the matter was under investigation.
Taking the cue that the video is from Guwahati, news articles about the same incident were found from google search with relevant keywords. The ‘Puchka’ (Panipuri) vendor was arrested for adding urine to water. The accused was arrested by Bharalumukh police, and he was identified as Akrul Sahini. The accused was a resident of the Bhootnath area, and the Panipuri stall was set up in the Athgaon area in Guwahati. The investigation is still going on.
Aajtak had written a fact-check article about the same video. They had contacted the officer in charge of the Bharalumukh police station, Jyoti Lahana. Jyoti Lahana had refuted the claim made in the post and confirmed that the accused is a Hindu and not a Muslim.
To sum it up, a video of a street food vendor adding his urine to water is shared with a false communal narrative.