By Archis Chowdhury
A set of two disturbing photos showing a mob stripping a woman and attacking her is being shared on Twitter with the claim that it shows a Bharatiya Janata Party supporter being attacked by Congress workers in Bengal for sloganeering in support of the BJP and Prime Minister Narendra Modi at a Congress rally.
BOOM found this claim to be false; our fact-check revealed that the images are from a 15-year-old event of mob attack on a tribal woman, that happened in Assam's Guwahati on November 26, 2007.
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A user shared the images on Twitter with the caption (translated from Hindi), "There is no such thing as law in Mamta Banerjee government, there is only Jihad".
The image also has a text in Hindi, which translates in English as, "Congress workers in Bengal chased and attacked a Hindu woman. Her only fault was to say Long Live BJP and Modi at a Congress rally. Share this and show Congress' true face to the world."
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Fact-Check
BOOM did a reverse image search with the photos, which led us to several news reports about a mob attack in Guwahati on a tribal woman on November 26, 2007.
The thumbnail provided by a News18 report from November 26, 2007, showed the exact same scenario as seen in the viral photo.
We also found an article by The Telegraph, published on November 27, 2007, which included another photo from the incident. An excerpt from the news report reads, "A young adivasi woman ran down a Guwahati street naked stripped by ethnic rioters while leering city youths clicked away with their cell phone cameras."
We came across a blogpost article carried by Newsclick, which contained a report by IBN Live carrying stills form the incident which matched the viral image.
Another article on the matter by Times of India stated that members of the adivasi communities had called for a protest to demand inclusion in the Scheduled Tribes list, which resulted in property damage and angered the local residents. The protest spiraled out of control when the residents attacked and humiliated one adivasi woman.
Here is an excerpt from the article:
"But it was one adivasi woman who bore the brunt of the anger of the anger of local residents. She was attacked, her clothes were ripped off and a mob chased the naked woman along the streets. Ducking from prying eyes and TV cameras and terrified by screams of a mob chasing her, the woman ran until some other residents rescued her on Saturday and gave her clothes and cover both from the lathi-wielding police and the assailants."
