Old Clip of Tractor Sale Shared as One of ‘Hiring People’ for Farmers’ Protest

The video, which shows a tractor sale deal being made in Punjab's Barnala, predates the ongoing farmers' protests.

The viral video is a month old and has no connection to the ongoing farmers' 'Delhi Chalo' protests around Delhi.

(Photo: Altered by The Quint)

A video showing a group of men wearing turbans getting into a verbal spat, with one man physically restraining another one, is going viral on social media.

The claim: The video is being shared to claim that it shows visuals from the ongoing farmers' protests around Delhi, adding that it shows "deal to be part of farmers protest."

• The posts claim that the current rate for hiring a protester is ₹35,000, however, the man in the video was manhandled because he demanded ₹40,000.

An archived version of this claim can be seen here.

(Source: X (formerly Twitter)/Altered by The Quint)

The Quint received multiple queries for this video's verification on its WhatsApp tipline.

(Archives of more posts sharing this claim can be seen here, here, and here.)

Is it true?: No. The video predates the ongoing farmers' protests and shows a deal being made for selling a tractor in Barnala, Punjab.

How did we find out the truth?: Using InVID, a video verification extension for Google Chrome, we divided the viral video into keyframes and ran a reverse image search.

• This took us to a YouTube video, published on 17 February, which was titled "Innocent Punjabi || Funny tractor sale deal !! (sic)."

• Another result showed us an Instagram post dated 17 January 2024, which was shared with a caption in Punjabi.

• The caption loosely translates to "Who saw the atmosphere at the market yesterday?"

This video was shared almost a month before the farmers' protests began.

(Source: Instagram/Altered by The Quint)

Taking cues from this, we looked up 'Tractor market deal' using Punjabi keywords across social media platforms.

• One of the searches on Facebook led us to the same video by a page called 'Jatt Zimidar Vlog', where the same video was shared on 16 January 2024, captioned "see how the deal of tractor is being done."

• We reached out to the admin of the page, who confirmed that the video had no connection to the farmers' protest.

• "It has nothing to do with the farmers' protest. This is a video of a tractor sale," they said, adding that the video was taken in Barnala, a city in Punjab.

Conclusion: An old video of a deal being made to sell a tractor in Barnala, Punjab is being falsely linked to the ongoing farmers' protests around Delhi.

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