A few days ago, a girl from Lucknow, Priyadarshini Yadav came into the limelight after she allegedly beat a cab driver, Saadat Ali Siddiqui on the ground of reckless driving. The incident took place on 30 July, where she claimed that the cab driver did not follow the traffic rules and ran over her, for which she as a form of self-defense slapped him over 22 times and smashed his phone into pieces, took Rs. 600 from his cab, accused him of trying to take her life, she also added that a whole gang was conspiring against her, and following that Siddiqui was put behind the bars for 72 hours, and his relatives were harassed as well. However, while investing through the case, things got sticky as the CCTV told a whole new different story, where one can easily spot Yadav trying to cross the road through a zebra crossing, even at the ‘green’ light. Siddiqui now seeks justice and appealed for Yadav’s arrest.  

As per the police, the case was filed under sections 394 (voluntarily causing hurt in committing robbery) and 427 (mischief causing damage to the amount of Rs 50) of the Indian Penal Code. 

Although a video surfaced amid all this chaos in which one can see a woman being taken into custody by police officers, she can be seen chained in one hand and is walking with a few lady police officers. Netizens claim her to be Priyadarshani Yadav a.k.a. the ‘Lucknow Girl’. A Facebook page ‘Indian News’ shared the video and has garnered over 1.8 lakh views. The same post was shared on Twitter as too. Even the video is shared on Youtube as well. A channel ‘X24 News’, shared the same viral visuals with different narration.

 To get to the bottom of the random claim, a fact check was necessary. The visuals from the viral video looked suspicious as none of the current COVID-19 protocols were followed. Not even a single soul was spotted using facial masks neither they were maintaining a minimum distance. Additionally, the woman from the viral video did not resemble Priyadarshini Yadav either. A reverse search of different keyframes from the video was done and the same video was found uploaded on a Youtube channel on 30 March 2017. A channel ‘MHK Tanha’ shared the same video and titled, “Anuradha Choudhary LADY Don Anand Pal Case.”

The video describes the woman as Anuradha Chaudhary, a criminal with a reward worth Rs 10 thousand declared from Rajasthan for her arrest. She was a close companion of Rajasthan based-gangster Anand Pal, who died in a police encounter in June 2017.

  Further, news channel News 24 had uploaded a bulletin in 2016 that carried the viral visuals and mentioned that the woman seen in the visuals is ‘Lady Don’ Anuradha Choudhary.

Thus, it is clear that as per the viral claim, the woman in the video is not Priyadarshini and neither is this video recent, as this news belongs from B.C (Before Covid) era. The infamous ‘Lucknow Girl’ is yet to be arrested and had she been arrested, it would have been all over the news.