Lighthouse Journalism came across a video that shows police beating some people. It was claimed along with the video that the video features UP police misbehaving with devotees who have come for a royal bath in Mahakumbh.
During the investigation, we found that the video was not related to the ongoing Mahakumbh, but it is old and from Jharkhand.
Claim:
X user Commando Arun Gautam shared the video with the misleading claim.
Other users too are sharing the video with the same claim.
Investigation:
We started the investigation by uploading the video in the InVid tool and running a reverse image search on the keyframes obtained from the same.
We found the same video uploaded on X, by user Deepak Prakash on January 2, 2025.
The caption suggested that the video was from Jharkhand.
We found a few visuals from the video in a news report on bhaskar.com that was uploaded a month ago.
The headline suggested that the body of a youth was found in a drain and then the relatives protested, and police had to use batons to control the crowd. The incident happened in Dhanbad, Jharkhand.
We found the same visuals on the ETV Bharat website.
We found several other news reports about the incident.
We also found a video report on The Dhanbad Resistance.
Conclusion: A video of protests, and the use of batons by police, after a body was found in a drain in Dhanbad, Jharkhand is being falsely linked to the ongoing Mahakumbh in Prayagraj. The viral claim is misleading.
