Fact Check: Video Of Woman Being Brutally Beaten Up Is Unrelated to Manipur Violence

New Delhi (Vishvas News) – Amid the ongoing violence in Manipur, a video is viral on social media where several men, dressed in camouflage pattern clothes, can be seen assaulting a woman. Some social media users are claiming that this video is related to the ongoing violence in Manipur.

Vishvas News found that the viral video is actually from Myanmar and is not related to the Manipur violence.

What’s in the viral post?

Facebook user ‘Shivam Kushwaha’ (archive link) shared this video on June 19 with the caption, originally in Hindi, ” Manipur has gone out of control of Modi and Shah. Videos have emerged of armed civilians torturing a Kukhi Christian young girl and eventually shooting her to death. Manipur is burning and Modi is silent.”

Investigation

To investigate the viral claim, we performed a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. We found a news article dated December 6, 2022, on the Myanmar news portal ‘Myanmar Now’, which used one of the keyframes from the viral video. The headline of the article read, “NUG opens probe into brutal killing of woman by members of its resistance force.” NUG here refers to the National United Government. According to the news report, Myanmar’s People’s Defense Force (PDF) suspected the woman to be an informant, leading to her being beaten and brutally murdered.

We also found an article on ‘Click for PDF’ on the same incident in Myanmar in December 2022. It also included a keyframe from the viral video as the lead image.

Journalist Paojel Chaoba, who has been covering the Manipur violence for a local news site, The Frontier Manipur, confirmed to Vishvas News that the video is indeed from Myanmar and not Manipur.

An ethnic conflict between the Meitei and Kuki communities erupted in Manipur on May 3. According to reports, the violence has claimed over 100 lives till now. More information about it can be read in the news reports here, here, and here.

In the end, we scanned the Facebook profile of ‘Shivam Kushwaha’, the user who shared the old video falsely claiming it to be from Manipur. We found that he is a resident of Madhya Pradesh and has more than 600 followers.