Video of man beaten in Telangana falsely claimed to be from Andhra Pradesh

Trigger Warning: Description of violence

What is the claim?

On October 11, 2023, a user on X (formerly Twitter) posted a black-and-white video of a group of men brutally attacking another man sitting on the ground as he pleads with folded hands. This video was shared with a caption in Telugu, which when loosely translated to English claims that a personal assistant of a ruling party member of legislative assemly (MLA) is beating an innocent person for questioning the Andhra Pradesh government. The post criticises the ruling party in Andhra Pradesh, the YSR Congress Party. The archive link of the post can be found here.

Screenshot of the claim online (Source:X/Screenshot/Modified by Logically Facts)

What are the facts?

A reverse image search showed us that the video was shared by an X user, who describes herself as a journalist with ABN Telugu news channel. Hema shared a color version of the video, with a caption in Telugu that said that a supporter of Jubilee Hills Bharatiya Rashtra Samithi (BRS) MLA Maganti Gopinath and his current personal assistant, Bhaskar, attacked a man seen in the video. She added that the victim is undergoing treatment.

We conducted a keyword search on incidents of assault from Hyderabad’s Jubilee Hills area in Telangana and came across various news reports. A report published in The Indian Express on October 12, states that the man was allegedly assaulted for speaking to a woman late at night. One of the accused, Lalith, came and questioned the victim, Chandu, when he was seen talking to a woman at around 2 a.m. As per the report, Lalith and Bhaskar were taken into custody.  The report identified the accused Bhaskar as Gopinath's aide.

Another report in the Times of India, published on October 12, shared a blurry screenshot from the now-viral video. The report quoted the police as saying that the victim Chandu left for his hometown after getting treated in a hospital in Hyderabad.

Image of the Times of India article with a published screenshot from viral video (Source:TimesofIndia/Screenshot) 

Geolocation shows the incident happened in Telangana

Logically Facts also geolocated the spot of the incident, and confirmed that the incident took place in Yousufguda, Hyderabad, Telangana. In this comparison, one can see a mens’ wear shop called Revolution, a fast food centre, a Swami clinic board on Street view, as seen in the now-viral video.

Geolocating the viral video shows similar elements (Source:X/GoogleMaps/Screenshot)

Logically Facts also contacted the Jubilee Hills Station House Officer P Ravindra Prasad to corroborate the details of news report. The policeman told us us that the incident happened on the intervening night of October 7 and 8, in Yousufguda near Jubilee Hills. “We have registered under a case under Section 307 (murder) of the Indian Penal Code (IPC). Two main accused were arrested and sent to remand. We are yet to reach out to the victim and further investigation is going on," he said.

As this video began circulating on social media, the Fact Check Wing of the Andhra Pradesh government also clarified on its X account that the video is from Telangana and has been wrongly attributed to Andhra Pradesh.

Screenshot of the post shared by Fact check wing of Andhra government (Source:X/screenshot)

The verdict

A video of an assault that happened in Telangana has been misinterpreted to be from Andhra Pradesh. Hence, we rate this claim as false.