Footage of naked election protest falsely linked to violence in India's Manipur
- This article is more than one year old.
- Published on July 7, 2023 at 12:10
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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"In Manipur, a team of naked women have been deployed to oppose the police," reads a Hindi-language tweet posted on July 1.
"They are chasing the police naked. Guess what kind of conspiracy is going on there?"
The tweet surfaced following weeks of deadly clashes in the remote northeast Indian state of Manipur, sparked by long-standing ethnic tensions.
Some speculated that the violence was a conspiracy orchestrated by "anti-India" groups -- a jibe that is also commonly used against protesters in the country.
The video shows a naked person -- whose body is covered in the clip with an emoji -- brandishing a stick and following police officers in the street.
The video was shared in similar posts on Facebook and Twitter falsely linking it to the violence in Manipur.
Uttar Pradesh protest
A reverse image search on Google found the video in a tweet about a protest following allegations of vote rigging in the north Indian state of Uttar Pradesh.
"Sonu Kinnar was ahead in Municipal Council Mughalsarai but the administration declared BJP candidate Malti Devi victorious by 138 votes," reads the Hindi-language tweet posted on May 16 (archived link).
"Transgender persons protested fiercely in their own way. Re-counting took place in which Sonu Kinnar won by 397 votes."
The tweet shows another video of the protest that shows several naked demonstrators.
Sonu Kinnar -- who is transgender -- ran as an independent candidate in municipal elections in Mughalsarai -- also known as Pandit Deen Dayal Upadhyay Nagar -- in Uttar Pradesh in May.
Protests erupted after a candidate for India's ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was declared the winner. Authorities subsequently ordered a recount of ballots and declared that Sonu had in fact won the election, but did not comment on allegations of vote rigging.
Sonu told AFP that the protesters who rallied to support him were members of the transgender community.
"This video is from the counting of votes for the Uttar Pradesh civic by-election in May 2023 when I was defeated by unfair means," he said.
"When my supporters protested fiercely, the counting of votes was done again and I won by 397 votes."
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the Twitter video from May (right):
Content warning
Sonu told AFP that the protesters decided to strip off in a bid to bring attention to their case.
The protest was widely covered in Indian media, including here, here and here (archive links here, here, here).
Geolocation by AFP confirmed the protest took place on Manasnagar Railway Colony Road in Mughalsarai, Uttar Pradesh (archived link).
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