An old scripted video shared as father beating groom for demanding dowry

Context

On May 9, 2023, several news channels shared a video of a man beating a groom at a wedding ceremony claiming that a bride's father was assaulting the groom for asking for a motorcycle as dowry. News18 Virals shared the clip on YouTube on May 8, 2023, with the caption, "The son-in-law asked for a motorcycle as dowry, and the father-in-law gave him slippers in front of everyone." The YouTube video has 22,000 views.

Several other news channels like NDTV Hindi, Zee News, and News24 shared the clip on their website with the same claim. Though some of these videos were later taken down, the video went viral online with one post receiving 7,92,400 views and over 200 retweets. 

The minute long clip shows the father-in-law slapping the groom as attendees at the wedding look on. Later, the groom is seen walking on the street with the bride, wiping tears from his eyes. 

However, this is not a real incident but a clip extracted from an old scripted video from 2021. 

In Fact

Some visual discrepancies in the video and the response of the groom after he was beaten indicated that the video could have been scripted. Small cues like the groom smiling in the video showed that the reactions of the people involved in the video may not be genuine and could be scripted. 

Additionally, comments on some of the tweets indicated that it was part of an old video created by a YouTube channel. Using these keywords, we found the YouTube channel of ‘Maithili Bazar’, which has 78,000 subscribers. The channel uploaded a video on May 8, 2021, with the headline, "Why did the groom beat the bride during the farewell, and the bride’s father the groom?"

The original video is over four minutes long. It has three artists — Sunil Suman and Mohan Mandal playing the groom and bride’s father, respectively, while Pooja Misra playing the bride. 

The viral video clip has been cropped from this original video and can be seen from time stamp 2:40 to 3:40. 

The ‘Maithili Bazar’ channel creates routinely creates video for YouTube. The incident depicted in the video is fictional, uploaded two years ago.

The Verdict

The video clip of a man beating a groom with slippers at his wedding for demanding dowry has been edited out of an older scripted video from 2021. Therefore, we mark this claim as false.