Video Shows Police Beating Muslim Men For Pelting Stones? No, Claim is False

Fact-Check: The men in the video belonged to the Hindu community, and the clash was reportedly over a property issue.

(Source: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing police personnel beating two people with sticks on the terrace of a building has gone viral with a claim that the duo belonged to the Muslim community, and was beaten for pelting stones at Hindus and the police.

A link to archive can be found here.

(Source: Facebook/Screenshot)

(The claim was widely shared on Facebook and Twitter, archives of some can be found here and here.)

What is the claim?: The claim states that the two Muslim men were throwing stones, following which the police went on top of the building and beat them up.

• The video also shows a bulldozer and it is being claimed that the police demolished the building because of their actions.

• It states that the incident happened in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh and hails Chief Minister Yogi Adityanath.

What's the fact?: The incident happened in Pukhrayan town in the Kanpur Dehat district, Uttar Pradesh on 18 October. The two people were identified as Sameer and Kartik Sundar, sons of one Malikram.

• Reportedly, the pair pelted stones at the police, who had gone to demolish the building, following which they were beaten up.

• As per the police, Malikram was illegally occupying the property and had recently lost the case over the disputed property to one Satyadev Prasad.

• A civil court had ruled in favour of Satyadev and ordered to demolish the building.

How do we know?: We fragmented the video into several keyframes using InVID and conducted a reverse image search on some of them, which led us to several tweets by journalists.

• One of the tweets mentioned that the incident was from Kanpur Dehat and that it showed Malikram's sons throw stones at the police, who had gone to demolish the building they were "occupying illegally".

What do the news reports say?: Taking this as a cue, we conducted a keyword search and found a news report in the Hindi daily Dainik Bhaskar.

• According to the news report, the incident was from the Bhognipur police station area in Kanpur Dehat.

• It added that a civic court had passed a judgment in favour of Satyadev and found that Malikram's family was in illegal occupation of the house, thus, asking the authorities to demolish the building. The report identified the people pelting stones as Sameer and Kartik.

We also found other news reports about the incident.

What did the police say?: We contacted Tanu Upadhyay, the Circle Offier (CO) Bhognipur, Kanpur Dehat, who confirmed that the both parties involved in the incident were from the Hindu community.

• "We have arrested the people – Sameer and Kartik – who were pelting stones. They are the sons of Malikram, who was illegally occupying the building for a few years and recently lost the property dispute case to one Satyadev," Upadhyay said.

• We also got a copy of the FIR filed against the duo, which corroborated the information given by Upadhyay and the news reports.

Evidently, a video showing police beating people for pelting stones at them during the demolition of an illegally occupied building has gone viral with a false communal spin.

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