Fact Check: Old video of man crying falsely linked to communal violence in Haryana

Hyderabad: A video showing a man and woman wailing helplessly among a group of men is doing rounds on social media. Users claim that the video shows a man from Mewat in Haryana who saved himself from communal violence by hiding in a temple.

A user shared the video with the caption, “See the pain of the suffering Hindus of Mewat who saved their lives by hiding in the temple yesterday… (sic)” The post also gives unsubstantiated ‘data’ on the number of people affected by the violence.

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the video has been on the Internet since 2020.

On performing a reverse image search of the video’s keyframe, we found it on Twitter, published on August 27, 2022. The user captioned the post as: “A Hindu Man, Hari is cursing himself for being born as a Non-Muslim in the Islamic state of Pakistan. Armed men beat him, abducted his 22-year-old daughter. No one helped. She returned after days of constant, severe gang rape. She hardly can move. Sujawal Goth, Sindh. (sic)”

Taking this as a cue, we ran a keyword search and came across a video published on December 10, 2020, by a man maned Harish Sultan. The video was titled “A Pakistani Hindu Crying for Being Born in Pakistan.” In the video that lasted for more than 6 minutes, the viral clip appears at 1.10 minutes and ends at 1.34 minutes.

Harris Sultan, in the About Section of the channel, has described himself as “an ex-Muslim atheist activist and author.”

We also found that the video was posted three years ago on Reddit with the description, “Pakistani Hindu Hari, curses and beats himself for being born as Hindu. His daughter was abducted and gang raped. She is in serious condition right now. (sic)”

NewsMeter could not independently verify the location and date of the video. However, since the video has been on the Internet since 2020, we can conclude that the video has no links to communal violence in Haryana. The claim is false.