Fact Check: Old video of students protesting falsely linked to recent Kannur incident
A video of protesting students talking to media persons is widely being shared on social media.
By Tejal Sinha Published on 27 Jan 2022 3:07 AM GMT
Hyderabad: A video of protesting students talking to media persons is widely being shared on social media.
It is being claimed that these students are protesting against the stabbing of an SFI activist at Idukki Engineering College, Kannur.
NewsMeter received the video with a text on WhatsApp.
Some users had also shared a similar video on Facebook.
Fact Check
The claim is misleading.
NewsMeter began its investigation by gathering some more information about the death of the Students' Federation of India (SFI) activist.
According to a Jan 10 report of India Today, a quarrel reportedly broke out between students during the college union elections that eventually resulted in the murder. "The SFI claims that workers of Kerala Students Union (KSU), the youth organization of Congress were involved in the murder. The deceased has been identified as Dheeraj, a Kannur native," the report said.
Taking the investigation further, NewsMeter performed a Google Reverse Image Search. The search led us to a Facebook post uploaded by a page named 'SiMz 4u Media' on July 13, 2019. The video had similar visuals.
"Student stabbed at University College. Akhil, a third-year BA student, was stabbed. The incident took place during a confrontation between the students. Akhil was admitted to the general hospital with a stab wound to the chest. The clashes erupted when a group of students questioned him as he sat in the canteen singing," the video description said.
We then noticed that both the viral video and the original video had a text that read 'Asianetnews'. Taking a cue from the evidence that we gathered through the Facebook post and the text in the video, we performed a keyword search. The search led us to a video news report published on the website of Asianetnews on July 12, 2019.
According to the description on the website, "Akhil, a third-year graduate student, was stabbed during an incident. Students say that they were chased and beaten up by SFI activists for singing and sitting under a tree."
We then compared the visuals of the viral video and the original video.
Hence, it is evident that the claim is misleading. The video is of an incident in 2019 in Thiruvananthapuram of an SFI activist. It is being linked to the murder of an SFI activist in Kannur on January 10, 2022.
