Old video of dispute over road widening in Himachal falsely linked to sexual assault

What is the claim? 

A video showing a man in a white shirt pushing a woman down, followed by a tussle between him and a group of women, has been shared online to claim it shows the man being beaten up for sexually assaulting a teenager. 

An X (formerly Twitter) user shared the video with the caption, “A man was inappropriately touching a teenager in a village in India…On seeing this horrific act, then half a dozen women of the village jumped in to teach the sex predator a lesson (sic).” The post was shared over 3,000 times and had garnered 15,000 likes at the time of writing this story. Similar claims can be found here, here, and here.

Screenshots of the viral claim. (Source: X / Modified by Logically Facts)

However, we found that the video is from April 2021 and shows a fight that broke out over a road widening issue between a local women's group and the land's owner in the northern Indian state of Himachal Pradesh's Mandi district.

What we found 

A reverse image search on some of the keyframes of the viral video led us to an article published in Hindi by News18 on February 20, 2021. The report stated that the incident happened in Sarwala village under Kotli tehsil of Mandi district in Himachal Pradesh on February 17, 2021. The article also contains a set of visuals that match frames from the now-viral video. 

Visuals from the viral video and the 2021 News18 article. (Source: X/News18)

The report states that the fight was over the issue of road widening. Members of a mahila mandal (women's group) were working on widening a supposedly narrow road passing through Sarwala village. However, the land's owner protested against this, and an argument escalated into a fight. The News18 report added that both parties had filed a First Information Report (FIR) against each other.

Logically Facts spoke to News18's Virendra Bharadwaj, who confirmed the details and added the incident was not related to sexual assault. We spoke to another Himachal Pradesh-based journalist, U.K. Sharma, who shared the same information with us. 

The video of the brawl was also uploaded on the official YouTube channel of News18 Punjab/Haryana/Himachal (archived here) and Zee Punjab Haryana Himachal (archived here) from February 2021. 

The verdict 

The video is from April 2021 and shows a mahila mandal group and a man fighting over a road widening issue.