Fact Check: This Video of Police Performing Aarti of People Who Violated Lockdown Is One-Year-Old

Vishvas News (New Delhi): A video is going viral on social media in which some policemen can be seen performing aarti of those who violated the lockdown. It is being claimed that after the instructions given to the police of Karnataka High Court, the police performed the aarti of those who violated the lockdown and let them go. Vishvas News investigated and found the post to be misleading. A year-old video of Rewa, Madhya Pradesh is now going viral. At that time, the Rewa police performed the aarti of the people.

Claim

Facebook user Prasoon Kumar, while uploading a video on May 17, wrote: ‘You think that our law courts have been going overboard with their interference in everything in government administration with postulations? Today the Karnataka High Court said that the police should not beat the people who violate the lockdown. Therefore the police took Aarti and let the people go. Please see the video. ‘

The archived version of the Facebook post can be seen here. The video was uploaded on May 18, 2021 on the YouTube channel of Asianet News Hindi. Apart from this, we also found this video on the YouTube channel of Voice India News. Journalist Sushant Sinha also tweeted the video stating that it is from Karnataka.

Investigation

Vishvas News used the InVID tool to extract the screengrabs of the video. We searched the screengrabs using Google Reverse Image Search and found the original video on a YouTube channel named The Khabardar News. It was uploaded on April 12, 2020. It stated that the Rewa police inexplicably performed aarti and offered a garland to those who came out of the house.

We found the same video on Facebook posted by a page named Bhopal on April 11, 2020. The description stated that the video is from Rewa.

We also found a report on Naiduniya.com. On April 3, 2020, it was reported that aarti was performed and people were offered garland, chandan tilak and shreefal. Read the complete news here.

Vishvas News contacted Shyam Mishra, a journalist from Naiduniya, Rewa. He said that the viral video is one year old. This video is of the chowk of Rewa’s Sirmaur. At that time, the police captain used to be Abid Khan. On his instruction, DCP Manoj Verma, Subedar Dilip Tiwari, ASP Shiv Kumar Verma performed the aarti of the people.

Vishvas News investigated the user who posted the fake post. His social scanning revealed that he is based out of Kolkata.