In the video, a person can be seen being forced to drink something after being made to wear shoes. The account (@SAHR_Watch) posting the video claimed that the plight of the Dalit community in India is a cause for concern, as incidents of caste-based discrimination and violence continue to occur.
Fact check:
To verify the authenticity of the video, the DFRAC team first converted the video into several frames and then conducted a reverse image search on the internet. During this process, we came across a three-year-old story published in Dainik Bhaskar, titled, “Youth forced to drink water and urine in shoes, five arrested when a love affair with a married woman in Rajasthan went wrong”.
The report mentions that some people abducted a youth from Bhairund village near Sirohi and tied him to a well in a farmhouse near Sardarpura in the neighbouring district of Sirohi. During the beating, they forced him to drink urine and water in his shoes. They were angry with him for having a love affair with the wife of the same caste from his village. The next morning, when the victim’s parents reached the spot, the suspects extorted Rs 5,000 from them.
The report mentions that when the video of this incident went viral on social media, the administration sprang into action.
In addition, Chief Secretary Rajiv Swarup and Police Director-General Bhupendra Yadav had asked the Sirohi Police Chief for a report on the incident. Other media outlets had also covered the incident.
At the same time, we also found a tweet of the Rajasthan Police in this regard, according to which – in the video going viral on social media, atrocities have been claimed with Dalits, whereas this claim is completely wrong, because both the parties belong to the same community. This video is of the year 2020, the accused have also been arrested in the case.
This video had also gone viral in 2020.
Conclusion:
The claim made by the Twitter account of South Asian Human Rights Watch is false, as this video is from 2020 and the incident involves two sides of the same community.
