Old Video Shared With False Claim About Abuse of Dalit Man in Rajasthan
The Rajasthan Police confirmed that the victim and abusers were both from the same community.
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A video showing a man being forced to drink some liquid out of a shoe has gone viral with a claim that it shows Hindu men, from the privileged caste, coercing a Dalit man to drink water in Rajasthan.
In the video, the man on the ground is seen surrounded by several men, while one person puts some liquid into a shoe and asks him to drink it.
While caste-based atrocities are a reality in India, this video is being shared with a false claim. Firstly, this incident happened in 2020 and it showed that the person was being abused for having a relationship with a married woman in the village.
The SHO of the police station where a case was registered told The Quint that the victim and the abusers were from the same community and that it was not a case of caste-based violence.
CLAIM
The viral video was shared by Dayanand Kamble, deputy news director at the Directorate General of Information and Public Relations, Maharashtra, with a caption, "SpeechLess: These people considered themselves civilized and high caste (so called ) but their brains are rotten. Shame."
He later deleted the tweet but an archive of the same can be found here.
Other people on Facebook and Twitter also shared the claim.
We found that similar claims had previously been shared in 2020.
Archives of more such posts can be found here and here. We also received the claim as a query on our WhatsApp tip-line.
WHAT WE FOUND OUT
We used the InVID WeVerify Google Chrome extension to extract key frames from the viral video and conducted a reverse image search on some of them with relevant keywords.
While going through the search results, we found a report in Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar from two years ago.
According to the news report, the incident took place in Sumerpur area of Pali district in Rajasthan. The youth was kidnapped and brought to Suparna (Sardarpura) village in Sirohi on 11 June 2020 for allegedly having an affair with a married woman in the village. The report added that he was beaten up and forced to drink urine from a liquor bottle and was then given water in a shoe.
We found similar reports by English daily Hindustan Times and Hindi news organisation Patrika.
A video report was also filed by Dainik Jagran where Kota Superintendent of Police Rahul mentioned that the victim was accused of having a relationship with a woman which enraged the accused, who took him to Sirohi.
According to the news reports, the victim was Kaluram Dewasi and those arrested on the basis of the complaint were identified as Laxmanram Dewasi, Jawanaram, Bhimaram, Navaram, and Dargaram Dewasi. Subsequently, more people were arrested and produced in the court.
We contacted the SHO of Sumerpur Police Station, Rameshawer Bhati, who confirmed the details mentioned in the news reports. He dismissed the claim that it was a case of caste-based violence and said that both the abusers and the victim belonged to the same community. He told The Quint that 10 people had been charged for the abuse.
Evidently, an old video showing people beating a man up has gone viral with a false claim that it shows privileged caste Hindu men forcing a Dalit man to drink water from a shoe.
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