Fact-Check: Old video from Nepal falsely attributed to recent hunger strike protests in Bihar

A video is making rounds on social media showing Policemen holding sticks and shields kicking off a Buddhist Monk with the claim that this video is from Bihar, where some Buddhist monks have been on a hunger strike for the past several days at the Mahabodhi Temple in Gaya, Bihar.

Sharing this video on X, a user named Madan Lal Gautam wrote: “In Bihar, the monks were protesting to free Mahabodhi Mahavihara, Gaya, Bihar from Brahmins. The Bihar police were chasing and beating the Buddhist monk with sticks while taking him away”.

Similarly, other users shared the same video with the same claims on social media. The preview link can be seen here and here.

Fact-Check

In the probe, the DFRAC team found that the video had been misleadingly shared on social media.

Firstly, we noted Nepal Khabar’s logo at the top of the right side of the video, confirming that this video is not from Bihar.

Furthermore, we reverse-searched the keyframes from the viral video which led us to a Youtube channel showing a similar video that was posted in April 2024 with the title: “Police abused Buddhist monk in Bhadrakali on Saturday.

For more investigation, we searched some keywords related to the title of the YouTube video and came across some reports published in April 2024.
The reports stated that the Nepal Police Headquarters had announced that disciplinary action had been taken against the police personnel who beat a monk with a stick during a protest by the National Revolution Movement led by Rajendra Mahato, in Bhadrakali in Kathmandu.

Conclusion

It is clear from DFRAC’s fact-check that the viral video has been misleadingly linked to recent Bihar protests. Originally, the video was from April 2024 showing an incident that happened in Kathmandu, Nepal

Analysis: Misleading