Fact Check: Viral Claim Alleging Congress Workers Burning Their Own Dhotis While Trying To Fire Modi Effigy Is Fake

New Delhi (Vishvas News): A video going viral on social media shows a few people igniting an effigy, resulting in their dhotis catching fire. The video claims that these individuals are the Congress workers in Karnataka who accidentally ignited their own garments while trying to burn an effigy of the Prime Minister.

Vishvas News conducted an investigation and found the viral claim to be fake. The viral video dates back to 2012 and is from Kerala. It shows workers from the Kerala student union burning an effigy of the Vice Chancellor of MG University.

What’s Viral?

A Facebook user named Nitish Srivastava (Archive) shared the viral post on May 6, 2024, along with a caption alleging that “the lungis of five Congress members caught fire while attempting to burn an effigy of Modi in Karnataka.”

Investigation:

To verify the viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search on the keyframes extracted from the video which led us to a video uploaded on Asianet’s YouTube channel on July 5, 2012, where similar viral frames can be seen. According to the caption of this video, the incident took place in Kerala during a protest by KSU workers against the Vice Chancellor of MG University.

We also found a news article from the Times of India dated July 24, 2012, reporting the incident. It stated that during a protest against the vice Chancellor of MG University, a burning effigy resulted in injuries to some protesters. A PIL filed before the Kerala High Court advocated for a statewide ban on burning the effigy.

However, during our investigation, we found similar incidents reported from other parts of India as well. In December 2015, the lungis of AIADMK workers caught fire while trying to burn an effigy of the DMDK chief in Chennai, as reported by Indian Express. Another incident was reported in Shimla in the same month where three Congress workers sustained serious injuries while burning an effigy of Narendra Modi.

We also contacted Kerala-based journalist Prashant MS, who confirmed that this video dates back to 2012 when KSU activists attempted to burn the effigy of MG University’s Vice-Chancellor.

We scanned the Facebook account of Nitish Srivastava who shared the video with false claims. According to the profile, the user is from Haldwani and has 2000 Facebook friends.

Conclusion: Vishvas News in its investigation found that the viral claim is fake and the individuals in the video were not burning the effigy of Narendra Modi. The incident did not occur in Karnataka and the video captures a protest from 2012 in Kerala, where workers of the student union were burning the effigy of MG University’s Vice Chancellor.

Tags

• Congress
• Lok Sabha elections 2024