Since the mass evictions that took place in Assam’s Darrang district, a hashtag called #BoycottIndianGoods has been trending voraciously on Twitter.
The users from middle east criticized India for its policies and actions towards the minority communities. The hashtag was used thousands of times over the course of the last few days.
Tensions began to increase between Indians and users from Gulf countries on twitter.
This eventually led to the Indian embassy in Qatar to post a statement on the matter. The embassy called out the spread of misinformation and fake news and advised Indians to maintain unity and harmony.
To investigate the spread of fake news spread within the hashtag we found two very graphic videos that were posted by hundreds of users that we will not be performing a fact check upon.
Claim 1: Assam Horror
On September 25, 2021, the user claimed that the video posted was from Assam where muslims was killed in lieu of evictions. The video gained over 30,000 views on Twitter.
Fact-Check:
Upon reverse searching the key frames of the video, we found that the video was actually posted in 2011 and is from a firing that took place in Bihar.
Therefore, this claim is fake.
Claim 2: Another violent video
Another video that was being shared intensively was on a man being beaten up with sticks over and over again by many men. This video was being shared along with the claim that this how Muslims are treated in India.
Fact-Check:
We again performed a reverse search on this video and found that this video was taken in Haryana where the man seen in the video was coming back from the court after testifying as a witness. A group of men caught hold of him and beat him up for the same. Some claimed that Bajrang Dal had a hand in this but it was quickly fact checked by Alt News therefore there was no communal spin in the video.
Therefore this claim is also fake.
