Old attack footage falsely linked to India Muslim land boards bill

Published on April 11, 2025 at 03:54
3 min read
By Devesh MISHRA, AFP India

After India's parliament passed a bill to reform hugely wealthy Muslim land-owning organisations, false rumours surfaced online claiming eastern Bihar state's chief minister was attacked for supporting the legislation. But the posts feature a video that depicts an incident in March 2022.

"A youth from Bihar slapped CM Nitish Kumar for supporting the Waqf Bill," reads the Hindi-language caption to the video shared on Facebook on April 4, 2025.

Text with a similar claim has also been overlaid on the clip, which shows a person rushing towards another man on a stage before he is shoved away.

Screenshot of the false post, taken on April 9, 2025

Similar posts surfaced on Facebook as well as X after India's parliament passed a bill which Prime Minister Narendra Modi's government argues will boost transparency to powerful Waqf boards (archived link).

There are around two dozen of the Muslim land-owning organisations across the South Asian nation, owning some 900,000 acres (364,000 hectares), a multi-billion-dollar property empire that makes them one of the biggest landholders alongside the railways and the defence forces.

Opposition parties have criticised the government for pushing "polarising politics" at the expense of India's Muslim minority of 200 million.

But there have been no official reports that Bihar Chief Minister Nitish Kumar, an ally of Modi's Hindu nationalist Bharatiya Janata Party, was slapped for supporting the legislation.

"No such incident of attack on the chief minister happened recently," Rupesh Jha, a spokesperson for the Bihar police, told AFP on April 9.

A reverse search on Google using keyframes of the video also found it was posted on the X account of the Indian news agency ANI on March 27, 2022 (archived link).

"Bihar | A youth tried to attack CM Nitish Kumar during a program in Bakhtiarpur. The accused was later detained by the Police," reads its caption.

Screenshot comparison of the false post (L) and the video ANI posted in 2022

Multiple news accounts at the time also featured the video and said the incident happened during a programme in Kumar's hometown Bakhtiarpur (archived here, here and here).

The Times of India newspaper, quoting local police, reported that the man who attacked Kumar had a mental disability. The Bihar chief minister reportedly asked authorities not to take action against him (archived link).

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