Fact Check: Video of man thrashing a child is not from RSS school or Haridwar Ashram

Hyderabad: A video of a man thrashing a boy who looks like his student, while other kids around him watch in silence, is doing rounds on social media with the claim that the incident is from a Haridwar Ashram.

Another Facebook account shared the video with the claim that it shows how RSS train children. The caption of the video reads, “How RSS trains children.... Gruesome video... Plz Complain at - complaints@bba.org.in. (sic)”

Fact Check

NewsMeter found that the claim is false.

We performed a reverse image search using the keyframes from the video and found that the video is from the Sanskrit School at Sidhauli, Sitapur in Uttar Pradesh. According to a report on Aaj Tak, “The incident is from a Gurukul (Sanskrit Vidyalaya) located in Sidhauli, Sitapur. Acharya Satish, who teaches here, brutally beat the student Deepak over a minor issue.”

We found similar reports along with the same visuals on multiple Indian media outlets such as Dainik Bhaskar, Amrit Vichar, Indian Express and Jagran, published on October 9, 2023.

Moving forward, we found a video report on the same incident on the YouTube channel of News Time Nation, published on October 10. Here, the school has been identified as Kishori Sanskrit Vidyalaya.

Further search led us to tweet from the Sitapur police on the incident on X. In the tweet CO Sadar Shri Raju Kumar Sahab can be seen clarifying the case. In a video, he confirmed that the viral video is two months old and is from a Sanskrit school in the Sidhauli area. The man seen beating the child in the video has been identified as Satish Joshi, a teacher at the school.

The video was shared with the caption, “A case has been registered under relevant sections on October 10, 2023, in the case of beating of a student by a teacher/acharya under police station Sidhauli area. Legal action is being taken as per the rules by taking the accused into custody. In this regard, CO Sadar Shri Raju Kumar Saav has given information in the video. (Translated from Hindi)”

Another tweet from the police showed them visiting the school and talking to the teachers and students there.