Old video of stone pelting from Telangana shared as footage from recent violence in Haryana

By: Umme Kulsum
August 3 2023

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Context

As the north Indian state of Haryana remains on edge after violence erupted on Monday in its Nuh district, soon spreading to other parts, social media has been flooded with several unrelated visuals being linked to the recent unrest. One such video showing a man pelting stones at a crowd gathered for a rally is being shared online as a recent event from Haryana's Gurguram district. Sharing this video on X (archive here), one user wrote: "A video coming out from the #Gurugram voilance (violence) about how to start a voilance (violence). These morons should be punished very hard as they are playing with the emotions of the peoples and leads to a clash between two factions (sic)."  

The post alone had gathered over 45,000 views at the time of publishing. Despite many users believing the video was shot in Gurugram recently, Logically Facts found the viral video dates back to at least August 2022 and is not from Haryana.

 In fact

After conducting a reverse image search using keyframes from this video, we found a better-quality but slightly shorter version of the same clip that was shared on X on August 24, 2022. Shared by the account '@mana_prakasam,' the post did not include any information about the location of the incident. However, it confirmed that the clip was shot at least a year ago.

On analyzing the better-quality version of the viral video closely, around the 0:05 timestamp, we spotted a faint 'TS' on the number plate of a white bus parked in the background. We could also spot a green road sign behind a blue bus seen in the viral video. The road sign mentioned the text 'Suryapeta 58 km'. Suryapeta is a city in the southern state of Telangana, where the registration code for vehicles starts with 'TS.' This suggests that the viral video was filmed in Telangana, not Haryana.

We were also able to locate a video with similar visuals on Facebook. Posted by 'News Today Channel' on August 25, 2022, the clip showed the same blue bus and identical buildings in the background, as seen in the viral video. The description suggested that the video was shot in Telangana during a rally of Bandi Sanjay Kumar, then Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) president for the state unit. The description read, "Stone Pelting by BJP workers in the Presence of Telangana Police during BJP Chief Padayatra."

Manne Krishank, a Bharat Rastra Samithi (BRS) representative and chairman of Telangana State Mineral Development Corporation had also shared the viral video on X on August 24, 2022, alleging that BJP workers pelted stones after the instruction of senior leaders. The clip was captioned, "What sort of Padayatra is this where BJP workers are pelting stones on the directions of BJP State President BS Kumar?"

Several media outlets, including The Times of India and The Print, had reported on the stone pelting incident that had allegedly occurred on August 15, 2022, during Bandi Sanjay Kumar's padayatra (rally on foot) in Devaruppala, a village in the Jangaon district of Telangana. During the padayatra, the BJP chief questioned the TRS government's unmet promises, which sparked an altercation with TRS activists questioning him about schemes and programs run by the BJP-led government at the center. This led to a heated argument among workers of the two parties, resulting in stone pelting.

The verdict

The video is neither recent nor from Haryana. We mark the claim false as social media users are misattributing a video from Telangana to the Haryana violence.