Old, Altered Video Shared as TMC Workers Celebrating With Weapons

Fact-Check of West Bengal Violence | We found that the video was altered and a different audio overlay was added to create a false narrative.

(Photo: The Quint)

An altered video of people dancing with guns and swords has been shared by several social media users with a claim that it shows Trinamool Congress (TMC) workers celebrating their victory in the West Bengal Assembly elections 2021.

The video comes amid reports of widespread violence in the states that has caused the death of nearly a dozen people.

However, we found that the same video had been posted in 2020, much before the Assembly election results were announced. We also found that the viral video was edited to add TMC's 'Khela Hobe' jingle as its audio track.

CLAIM

The video was shared by several Twitter and Facebook users with the same caption that read, "TMC goons celebrate their win with sharp edged weapons, including swords, knifes and other weapons."

Hashtags like #PresidentRuleInBengal, #KhelaHobe and #BengalisBurning were also added to some of the posts.

BJP Mahila Morcha's Priti Gandhi also shared the same clip on her Twitter handle and captioned it, "Post result celebration in West Bengal... #KhelaHobe."

An archive of the post can be found here.

(Source: Twitter/Screenshot)

Several other accounts such as Kreately, which has been caught peddling misinformation several times in the past, also shared the video with a similar claim.

Archives of the viral video posted on Facebook can be found here, here, and here.

WHAT WE FOUND

Using the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension, we extracted some keyframes and ran a reverse image search of some of the keyframes. While going through the search results, we came across a post on YouTube that had the same video.

The video, which was posted on 7 October 2020, had a different audio than what the viral video had.

Comparison of the viral video with the video from October 2020. 

(Photo: The Quint)

We also found the same video posted on an Instagram page called @raj_creation_official. The user posted that video on 25 September 2020. That video, too, had a different audio.

While we have not been able to ascertain the location of the video or identify the original audio, it is clear that the audio Khela Hobe (let’s play) was added later to the video.

Khela Hobe was widely used during the campaigning for the 2021 West Bengal Assembly elections by the TMC.

TMC spokesperson and General Secretary of the party's youth wing Debangshu Bhattyacharya had first posted the jingle on 7 January 2021 on his Facebook page with the caption that said, "New Slogan Assembly Election 2021 | Khela Hobe".

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9643651818, or e-mail it to us at [e-mail] and we'll fact-check it for you. You can also read all our fact-checked stories here.)