Unrelated clips go viral with false claim of attack on migrant labourers in Tamil Nadu
A blurred video showing a group attacking a person with deadly weapons is being shared with the claim that Hindi-speaking Biharis were attacked in Tamil Nadu.
By Md Mahfooz Alam Published on 4 March 2023 12:06 PM GMT
(Screengrab source: Facebook)
Hyderabad: A blurred video showing a group attacking a person with deadly weapons is being shared with the claim that Hindi-speaking Biharis were attacked in Tamil Nadu. The video shows violence in two different frames.
(Screengrab source: Facebook)
Several Facebook users shared the video comparing it to the Taliban’s brutality. (Click here, here, and here to view the posts.)
Fact Check
NewsMeter found that the video shows two different incidents. One of them is from Hyderabad, and the other one is from Tamil Nadu’s Coimbatore but is not related to migrant labourers.
Incident 1
On performing a reverse image of the frame showing the first incident, we found a clear video of the incident tweeted by Hyderabad-based journalist Iqbal Hussain on 22 January. In a series of tweets, he said a person named J. Sainath was hacked to death by three persons on the main road at Jiaguda, Hyderabad.
NTV Telugu published a video report of the incident on 4 February stating that the incident took place in Jiaguda. It shows visuals as seen in the viral video.
On 23 January, The Siasat Daily reported that Hyderabad task force personnel had arrested the three accused—Akash, Tillu, and Sonu. It identified the deceased as Sainath and said the accused and the 32-year-old deceased were friends. It also mentioned that the preliminary investigations revealed that the accused were drunk, and a fight led to the gruesome murder.
Incident 2
A reverse image of the frame showing the second incident led us to report by The Time of India that carried a video which shows the same visual as the viral one. It said in broad daylight, two men were brutally attacked by a gang of five people with machetes in Coimbatore. One of the victims died on the spot, and the other was seriously injured.
Taking cues from this, we ran a keyword search and came across The Hindu report titled “Gang wars resurface in Coimbatore: Two hacked to death in public in two days.” It carries a photo that shows four suspects walking away after the murder, as seen in the viral video. It said the incident took place out of the Combined Court Complex in Gopalapuram, Coimbatore. The police identified the deceased as G. Gokul (24) and his friend, who escaped with a cut on his head, as Manoj (27). They were attacked with machetes by a gang outside the court.
The newspaper also reported that Gokul was one of the accused in the murder of a 22-year-old youth in 2021, and his murder is suspected to be a retaliation by the rival gang.
It is evident that both incidents seen in the viral video are not related to attacks on Biharis in Tamil Nadu. Hence, we conclude that the claim is misleading.
