Fact Check: 7-Year-Old Video Of Andhra Pradesh Girl’s Assault Falsely Linked To Manipur

New Delhi (Vishvas News). A video of a girl’s sexual harassment is going viral on social media. In the footage, a young man is seen molesting the girl while another records the incident, and another girl tries to intervene and stop the molester. Some users are sharing the video with communal claims, while some are claiming that it is from Manipur. Many users are mistakenly assuming the video is recent and are calling for action against the perpetrators.

Vishvas News’ investigation revealed that the viral video is of an incident that occurred seven years ago in Andhra Pradesh. In this incident, the police arrested all three accused under several sections including attempted rape. There was no communal angle in this case and is it not related to Manipur.

What is in the viral post

X user Amit Bokan Gurjar shared the video on September 8, 2024, giving it a communal angle.

X user Stephanie also made a communal claim, stating that the video is from Manipur.

Facebook user Abhishek Kumar considered it to be a recent incident and demanded action against the accused.

(Links to the posts are not provided to protect the girl’s identity.)

Investigation

On extracting the keyframes of the viral video and searching them using Google Lens, we found a related report on NDTV’s website. According to the news published on 27 September 2017, “A video has surfaced of a college student being molested and attacked by her boyfriend. The video was allegedly made viral on social media by the attacker and his two friends. The three youths have been arrested in Prakasam, Andhra Pradesh. The accused are identified as B Sai and Karthik.”

According to the video uploaded on the Times of India website, the police have arrested three accused and a case has been registered against them under various sections including attempt to rape.

In the news article published in The Hindu on December 27, 2017, the names of the accused were identified as B Sai, Karthik, and Pawan.

We reached out to the local journalist Sriharsha from Andhra Pradesh, who confirmed that the viral video is of a seven-year-old case from Andhra, where the police arrested three young men and no communal angle was involved in this case.

We scanned the profile of the user who shared the video with a communal claim. The user appears to be ideologically motivated and has 946 followers.

Conclusion: The viral video of an attempt to rape a girl is from a seven-year-old incident in Andhra Pradesh, where three youths were arrested. This video has no connection with Manipur, and there is no communal angle associated with it.

Tags

• Molestation
• Sexual harrasment