This video shows a bus that was attacked during a protest against a Bollywood film's release in India

This article is more than one year old.
Published on December 31, 2019 at 08:50
2 min read
By AFP India

A video has been shared in multiple Facebook and Twitter posts that claim it shows a school bus being targeted by protesters throwing stones in Seelampur area of Delhi, India. The claim is false; the video has circulated online since at least January 2018 in media reports about clashes in Gurugram city in Haryana, India following the release of a Bollywood film.

The 45-second video was published on Facebook here on December 16, 2019.

It shows distressed children crying as they take shelter between seats of a bus with broken windows, while several adults attempt to comfort them.

Below is a screenshot of the misleading Facebook post:

Screenshot of misleading Facebook post

The Hindi-language caption translates to English as: “Bus filled with school children came under attack in Seelampur, stone pelters didn't even spared the school bus filled with children.”

Protests turned violent in Seelampur, Delhi on December 16, 2019 after the Indian government passed a new citizenship bill, as reported here by AFP.

The Citizenship Amendment Bill grants citizenship to non-Muslim nationals from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan.

The video was also shared here, here and here on Facebook and on Twitter here with a similar claim.

The claim is false; the video has circulated online since at least January 2018 in reports about a protest against the release of a Bollywood film in Gurugram city in Haryana, India.

A reverse image search of a keyframe extracted from the video using InVID, a digital verification tool, found the clip was included in this media report published by Hindi-language Indian news outlet Zee Business, on January 24, 2018 on its YouTube channel.

The video has been embedded below.

The video’s title states: “Karni Sena attack school bus while protesting against Padmaavat.”

Below is a screenshot comparison of the video in the misleading posts (L) and the video published by Zee Business (R):

Image comparing screenshots

Padmaavat refers to a Bollywood film released on 25 January 2018 that resulted in months of protests across India due to its plot depicting a fictional Hindu queen, as reported by AFP here.

A similar video was also published here by Indian television channel NDTV on January 24, 2018 on its YouTube channel.

The same location for the incident was given in reports by multiple Indian news outlets, including this report by NDTV on January 24, this report by English-language Indian newspaper Hindustan Times on January 25 and this report by English-language Indian newspaper India Today on January 26.

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