Old video of police beating woman recirculates in posts about '2024 West Bengal protests'
- Published on March 13, 2024 at 08:41
- 3 min read
- By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India
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The 13-second clip -- shared here on X on March 1, 2024 -- shows an Indian policeman chasing and beating a woman with a stick as other officers chase a group of people on a road.
"Look at the 'monsters' of West Bengal. How the police and Sheikh's goons are beating sisters and daughters so that they do not raise their voice out of fear," reads the Hindi-language caption of the post, which has been shared 7,000 times.
"A rapist like Shahjahan walks confidently under police protection and the female victims are being beaten with sticks," the caption continues.
Shahjahan Sheikh -- a leader of West Bengal's ruling Trinamool Congress party -- was arrested on February 29, 2024 over accusations of sexual abuse and land grabs in the village of Sandeshkhali in West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district (archived link).
The accusations -- which sparked protests in Sandeshkhali -- resulted in Shahjahan being suspended by his party for six years, local media reported (archived link).
As of March 13, 2024, he has not publicly responded to the allegations.
The video was shared with similar false claims on Facebook here and here, and on X here.
But the video has circulated in reports since April 2020 about a clash between residents and police over the distribution of government aid during a Covid lockdown in West Bengal.
'Covid lockdown clash'
The video in the false posts included a logo for the Indian news agency Asian News International (ANI).
A keyword search on Google found the agency originally published the footage on X on April 22, 2020 (archived link).
The post's caption describes a clash between police and the residents of West Bengal's North 24 Parganas district, who had blocked the street over alleged "improper distribution of ration material" during a Covid-19 lockdown.
Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the false post (left) and the one published by ANI on X (right):
The clash was reported by local Indian media outlets here and here on the same day that it was distributed by ANI (archived links here and here).
According to the reports, residents threw stones at the police who arrived to remove their blockade, after which officers attacked and beat them.
A similar video showing the scuffle was used in a news report by local Bengali-language media outlet West Bengal News 24 on April 23, 2020 (archived link).
The woman wearing a green blouse is shown in the ANI video (left) and can also be seen in the West Bengal News 24 clip (right):
"This incident happened in 2020 over unfair ration distribution and now the video is being circulated with false claims, it has nothing to do with the Sandeshkhali protest," the outlet's chief editor, Nandgopal Tripathi, told AFP on March 5, 2024.
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