By Hazel Gandhi
A video purporting to show a Muslim man being thrashed for kidnapping a child while wearing a burqa is going viral online with the false claim that it is a true incident. BOOM found that the video was scripted and such an incident did not take place.
The video shows a man in a burqa holding a child as another man enters and starts beating him up for kidnapping the child. The 30-second clip then shows the kidnapper being thrashed continuously.
The video is circulating with the caption, "Hijab is also being used for child theft... Be careful"
(Original text in Hindi: "हिजाब भी इस्तेमाल हो रहा है बच्चा चोरी के लिए... सावधान रहें")
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
A post shared with an English caption reads, "Abdul wearing burqa trying to kidnap a Hindu child."
Click here to view the tweet and here for an archive.
The video is also circulating on Facebook.
Click here to view.
Click here to view.
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FACT-CHECK
BOOM found that the video was scripted and not based on a real incident. It was made and shared by a popular creator that often makes videos that are violent in nature.
While looking for the video on Facebook, we found that most of the posts led us to the original video uploaded by a user, Ankur Jatuskaran.
We browsed through Jatuskaran's page, and identified him as the same man in the viral video who was beating up the kidnapper. We also saw several other videos where Jatuskaran is beating up other people, both men and women.
Jatuskaran has 625,000 followers on Facebook, which gave us a clue that he might be a creator or influencer.
Most of the videos on his page carry a disclaimer that runs for about two seconds during a random portion of the video that reads, "This video is purely for viewer entertainment and is a work of fiction... This video is merely for entertainment purposes and should not be taken seriously."
Click here to view.
Click here to view.
However, we were not able to find the same video of him beating the kidnapper on his Facebook profile. We therefore went through the videos on his YouTube channel and found the video there, shared with the caption, "बच्चा चोर बुर्के में आते है #gareeb #viralvideo" (Translation: Child kidnappers come in burqas)
Here is a comparison of the visuals from the viral video and the original one from Jatuskaran's channel.
We also found another clip from the same video on his channel.
Even on YouTube, Jatuskaran's channel has over 897,000 subscribers. He has an Instagram following of 495,000. He recently even did a Facebook Live where he spoke to his fans by adding them to the stream and interacting with them, a common practice for influencers and creators.
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