Fact-Check: 2021 Video From West Bengal Falsely Linked to Sandeshkhali Violence

This video is from 2021 in Keshpur, West Bengal when a group of people attacked media personnel vehicles.

Fact-Check: The video is old from 2021 and is not related to the recent incident in Sandeshkhali. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

A video showing several people attacking a moving car is being shared as a recent incident from Sandeshkhali, West Bengal.

• Later in the video, a woman seated inside the car is seen speaking in Bengali to a man.

What is the claim?: Those sharing claimed that even with a woman chief minister in West Bengal, "a female journalist is welcomed" in this manner.

An archive of the post can be found here. 

(Source: X/Screenshot) 

This post recorded 52.3K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

What is the truth?: This video is from 2021 from Keshpur in West Bengal and is not related to the recent violence in Sandeshkhali.

• The video shows a group of journalists from Zee24 Ghanta being attacked by a group of locals while covering the assembly polls in the state.

How did we find out?: At first, we divided the viral video into multiple keyframes and ran a Google reverse image search on some of them.

• We also noticed the logo of Zee's 24 Ghanta channel on the viral video.

• Upon conducting the reverse image search, we found the same video on Facebook shared by the Bangla-language news channel Zee 24 Ghanta. It was uploaded on 1 April 2021.

• We compared the frames of both videos and found similarities.

Here is a comparison between the two videos. 

(Source: Altered by The Quint) 

• The video was uploaded with the caption, "Attack on Zee 24 Ghanta car in Keshpur, journalist Maitreyi Bhattacharya was affected while reporting."

• Upon conducting a relevant keyword search, we came across news reports by India Today and Zee News from April 2021 about the same incident.

• India Today reported that the incident happened shortly after the vehicle of Tanmay Ghosh, the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) candidate from the Keshpur Assembly constituency, was attacked.

• The police apprehended three individuals in relation to the incident.

• In addition, the convoy of BJP leader Pritish Ranjan Kuar was also attacked with stones in Keshpur.

• Zee News noted that their correspondents were attacked in Keshpur while doing their work.

Conclusion: It is clear that the video is being falsely linked to the recent violence in Sandeshkhali. The incident is old from Keshpur.

(Not convinced of a post or information you came across online and want it verified? Send us the details on WhatsApp at 9540511818 , 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.)