On Sunday April 11, several Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) members and supporters shared the image of an injured CISF officer claiming he was beaten up by a mob in Sitalkuchi. The next day, on April 12, a video started circulating on Twitter and those who shared it claimed it showed what transpired in Sitalkuchi. But it turns out that the picture was from Jharkhand and the video was from Manipur.
An AltNews expose’ says that the video was originally uploaded by the Indian Express on April 18, 2019 about an incident that took place during polling in a village Manipur. The video shows a clash between people and security forces as the Kyamgei Muslim Makha Leikaik polling booth. The text on the screen says that CRPF personnel fired blanks and engaged in lathi-charge.
According to The Telegraph Bengal BJP leaders including Suvendu Adhikari, Rajib Banerjee, Saumitra Khan and Arjun Singh had shared the video, but later took it down following social media backlash.
As far as the injured officer is concerned, AltNews identified him as Assistant Sub-inspector SP Sharma of Jharkhand. TMC had, in a press conference, revealed that the officer was injured in a langur attack in Baghmara, Jharkhand on April 9.
Four days after the Sitalkuchi attack, the regional arm of a television news network that is seen to be close to the regime played an 11-minute clip showing what they claimed was the incident in Sitalkuchi. The channel claims 200-300 people armed with sticks and sharp-edged weapons attacked the CISF personnel in a bid to capture the booth (no. 126) where polling was on. However, the number mentioned by the reporter is nowhere close to the number of people that can be seen in the video, though many of them can be seen carrying lathis.
At one point in the video, four to five people can be seen beating up a man. Towards the end of the video a man can be seen lying either injured or dead on the road outside the entrance to the premises that has an open field in front of the shed where the booth is located. Meanwhile, another journalist from a different network has tweeted another video of a shorter duration, from what looks like the same location. In this video five gunshots can be heard. Even in this video, one can see the injured/dead man lying on the street outside the entrance. This video too has gone viral on social media. SabrangIndia has not been able to independently authenticate either of the videos.
Meanwhile, Boomlive (Bangla) has busted another attempt to spread fake news, where it revealed that yet another video being shared as that of Sitalkuchi actually shows footage of an incident that took place in Panchkula in 2017. It also busted yet another attempt to use images from the 2014 Bhojpuri film Aurat Khilona Nahi to show that Hindus were being tortured in Bengal. A still from the movie showing a man pulling a woman’s saree in public has been used on several prior occasions by trolls previously as well. It was first debunked in 2017 when it was used to make allegations against a Uttar Pradesh MLA, and then again in 2018 to discredit a BSP politician, and subsequently to allege harassment of Dalit women by Opposition politicians or Muslims.
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Battleground Bengal: Five killed in Sitalkuchi, EC and Central forces under scanner again