No, this video does not show supporters of India's Trinamool Congress party harassing BJP workers in West Bengal

This article is more than one year old.
Published on May 21, 2019 at 09:00
2 min read
By AFP India

A video post purporting to show campaigners from India's Trinamool Congress party harassing workers from the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) in the state of West Bengal has been viewed thousands of times on Facebook. The claim is false; the footage was first published online in 2017 and shows a protest in Gujarat over a BJP motorbike rally during state assembly elections.

This post was published to Facebook on May 14, 2019, and has been viewed more than 17,000 times since.

The English-language caption reads: “No More Democracy in Kolkata, West Bengal see How the suppoters (sic) of Trinamul Congress Behaving with BJP WORKERS.”

Below is a screenshot of the post:

Trinamool Congress is the ruling party in the Indian state of West Bengal.

During India's general election, tensions between the Trinamool Congress and the BJP have spiked in West Bengal. Here is an AFP report on the trouble.

A reverse Google image search using keyframes of the video obtained through digital verification tool InVid found that the footage was actually filmed in December 2017 during state elections in Gujarat.

The exact same footage was posted on YouTube here on December 7, 2017, with a caption in English that reads: “Surat BJP Bike Rally Ridiculed”. That video is embedded below:

Here is a video report about the incident by Hindi TV channel ABP News posted on YouTube on December 7, 2017.

The video’s Hindi-language caption translates to: “The day before PM Modi’s rally in Surat, BJP workers have their caps thrown.”

Surat is a city in Gujarat, in western India. "Modi" refers to Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi, here is his Twitter account.

Another video report was published here on the YouTube channel of regional TV channel Vtv Gujarati News on December 7, 2017.

The video's caption reads: “Gujarat Polls: Residents protested BJP Rally in Surat, trashed BJP Cap, Mufflers & Banners.”

In the video, the news presenter says in Gujarati: “Locals in Mahidharpura area of Surat opposed BJP’s rally and threw away the party’s election campaign materials. Some BJP workers were reportedly thrashed by the locals.”

Below is a comparison of screenshots of the video in the misleading Facebook posts (L) and of the original footage in the ABP news report published on December 7, 2017 (R):

The same footage has previously been used to make a false claim that BJP workers were being harassed by Rohingya refugees.

AFP debunked that claim here.

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