A video is going viral, where one can see the agitated crowd mercilessly thrashing a group of young men with captions falsely claiming that the men being attacked in the clip are the same who had assaulted and cut off the beard of an old Muslim man in Loni, Uttar Pradesh.
Previously, a video went viral on social media showing an elderly man being assaulted by a group of people at Loni near Delhi. In a different video, the man claimed the attackers chopped his beard and asked him to chant “Jai Shri Ram”. Though, police dismissed the communal angles, saying it was personal rivalry. As a matter of fact, some of the accused were Muslims too.
Meanwhile, the new viral video is linked with the previous one and is shared with different baseless captions. One such post was captioned in Hindi along with the video which translated to, “Brothers, see the consequences of cutting off the beard. One of the four accused was caught by police, while the rest were punished by the public”
AFWA found that this viral video is in no way related to the incident of June 5, which took place in Loni, UP wherein a group of people had attacked and cut off the beard of a Muslim man in his 70’s, Abdul Samad Saifi. The shared video of the incident was mute and was widely shared on Facebook and Twitter claiming communal angle in the incident. Though, this recent viral video is from Delhi’s Jahangirpuri area where the local residents attacked the group of men for allegedly extorting money.
The Ghaziabad police confirmed that this incident is from Hazipur Bheta in the district and that three people have been arrested for the same. The police had booked six people – Parvesh Gujjar, Kallu Gujjar, Himanshu, Adil, Aarif and Mushahid, all residents of the area. Investigation led to the arrest of three – Parvesh and Kallu Gujjar and Adil while three are still absconding. The police also denied any communal angle in the incident though the victim’s family ingeminated their claim in several interviews to reporters.
NDTV covered this incident and as per their report, this incident is of June 12 when three people came to the house of a vegetable seller to extort money. But the vegetable vendor appealed to the neighbours for help, after which the people thrashed the three accused and then handed them over to the police.
Settling the situation, Sanjay Drall, assistant commissioner of police (ACP) Jahangirpuri said that both the parties were known to each other and that it was a “quarrel.” “It was a quarrel. Action has been taken,” he added.
SHO Jahangirpuri, Rajesh Kumar, also confirmed that the viral video is from Jahangirpuri and is not related to Ghaziabad’s Loni.
After the vegetable seller screamed, the people of the area caught hold of the three accused and beat them up with sticks. The police registered an FIR against the three accused.
Iraj Raja, superintendent of police (SP Rural) Ghaziabad, too confirmed to that the viral video is from Delhi and not Ghaziabad’s Loni.
Inspector CP Bhardwaj of Jahangirpuri police station shared the viral video with him and in his statement said, “This incident took place in our jurisdiction. Three men from Wazirabad, who are into recovery business, came to Jahangirpuri and started threatening locals. They also entered some houses. This resulted in a clash between locals and them. We arrested eight people, including three recovery agents.”
Hence, a video from Delhi’s Jahangirpuri attempted robbery case was falsely linked to the incident from Ghaziabad’s Loni wherein a septuagenarian Muslim man was attacked. Moreover, this viral video too has no communal angle. Thus, the made claims are false.
