Fact-Check: Alcohol being distributed at Farmers’ Protest? Twitter troll Rishi Bagree amplifies the misleading video

On September 13,2021, various handles on Twitter started to post a video showing massive amounts of alcohol being poured into a blue barrel. The users claimed that this is the true reality of the Farmers’ Mahapanchayat that took place recently.

It looks like men are lining up to ask for alcohol and this paints a bad picture of the protest. Seasoned Twitter troll Rishi Bagree posted the video further amplifying the video. He has since deleted the video but without any explanation. Rishi Bagree is followed by the likes of BJP President JP Nadda, Shefali Vaidya and Tajinder Pal Singh Bagga.

Fact-Check:

Upon further researching the claim, we came across independent journalist Sandeep Singh’s video , who in detail explains that video is not from the Farmer’s protest but from Kaunke Kalan Village in Ludhiana, Punjab, where every year, alcohol is offered to Baba Rodu Shah and is then distributed to devotees.

Singh goes to locals and asks them about the event and does a succinct comparison between the viral videos and the actual event. The video was only made viral by trolls such as Rishi Bagree who are directly followed by big leaders from the BJP party. goes to show that such claims about the farmer’s protest are only posted to malign the protest.

Since the video is from a festival and not the farmer’s protest, this claim is fake.

DFRAC Editor

Digital Forensics, Research and Analytics Centre (DFRAC) is a non-partisan and independent media organisation which focuses on fact-checking and identifying hate speech. With the popularisation of the internet came the challenge of information overload and often times, our feeds are overpopulated with conflicting, incendiary and false information which is increasingly becoming difficult to ignore and not believe in

See author's posts