This video has been taken from an Indian road safety campaigner's film

This article is more than one year old.
Published on April 21, 2021 at 06:00
2 min read
By AFP India

A video has been viewed thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook alongside a claim it shows a group of Indian Muslim motorcyclists brandishing weapons after they were stopped for not wearing helmets. The claim is false: the original video was actually staged by an Indian road safety campaigner for a short film.

The video was shared here on Facebook on March 23, 2021. It has been viewed more than 1,500 times.

The post’s Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “Those who beat the bush around secularism should see this. Indian Muslims were stopped for not wearing helmets and in a fit of anger they brought out guns and swords. Would police allow a Hindu to get away with this without issuing a penalty to them?”

An identical video was also shared alongside a similar claim here and here on Facebook.

The claim is false.

A reverse image search found the original video shared here on a YouTube channel called Helmet Man on March 20, 2021.

"Helmet Man" identifies himself as a social entrepreneur called Raghvendra Kumar on his corresponding Instagram page.

The title of the six-minute 26-second YouTube reads: "Helmet man stops Muslims and tells them to wear helmets before going for their prayers, swords are raised".

In the clip, Kumar can be seen talking to a crowd of people about the importance of motorcyclists wearing a helmet on the road.

On his Facebook page, "Helmet Man India", he uploaded an identical video here on March 21, 2021.

Kumar told AFP that the footage was staged for a road safety awareness campaign.

Both Hindus and Muslims were involved in making the video, which was filmed in the east Indian state of Bihar, he said.

"I along with some of my local Muslim friends created this video for educational purposes," he told AFP by phone on April 19, 2021. "[In the video], they were carrying non-lethal air gun guns used in shooting sports."

Kumar's road safety awareness videos have been reported in the Indian media, for example here and here.

A longer version of the clip was uploaded here on the YouTube channel of Indian news outlet Today Darpan on March 23, 2021.

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