2021 video shared as BRS leader assaulting voter during election campaign in Telangana

What is the claim?

Assembly elections in the south Indian state of Telangana are scheduled to be held on November 30, 2023. In the lead-up to the election, misinformation has been circulating on social media platforms. An X (formerly Twitter) user posted a video where one can see a man in a white shirt assaulting and abusing a person in a blue shirt, who has fallen to the ground, as others around them try to stop the assault. 

The video was shared with the caption: “#TelanganaAssemblyElections2023 #WATCH: BRS Hooligans attack Common People in TS!” BRS here refers to Bharat Rashtra Samithi, the ruling party in Telangana, and users have alleged that electoral candidates assaulted voters during their door-to-door election campaign. The post was shared on November 6, 2023, and has garnered over 23,700 views at the time of writing. An archived version of the post can be found here.

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

However, this claim is misleading, as the video is from 2021 and was not captured during the recent election campaign.

What are the facts?

As the post began to go viral, several users in the replies to the post pointed out that the video is old, and attached a news report which stated that a video of a sarpanch (village head) hitting a man in Telangana’s Vikarabad district had gone viral in 2021.

We then conducted a keyword search to ascertain whether such an incident was reported. We found a Times of India report published on September 23, 2021, with the title, “Telangana: Sarpanch arrested for beating up villager in Vikarabad district.” According to this report, the sarpanch of Damasthapur village, K Jaipal Reddy, of the ruling party Telangana Rashtra Samithi (now called Bharat Rashtra Samithi) was arrested by the police for beating up a villager named Srinivas.

The report, quoting the police, added that the village head was arguing with his cousin when the victim, Srinivas, who was reportedly drunk, interrupted them and told the village head to focus on water problems in the village instead. The report further added that the accused got bail after he was produced in front of the local magistrate.

According to a video report from ETV Telangana, uploaded on its YouTube channel on September 25, 2021, a Backward Classes (BC) commission had visited the village and conducted an inquiry. Members of the commission visited the house of the victim and made Sarpanch Jaipal Reddy apologise to the victim.

Several reporters and media outlets shared the original video on their social media accounts in 2021, corroborating the above reports.

Screenshots of journalists and media outlets sharing the viral video in 2021 (Source: X/@revathitweets/XpressHyderabad)

The verdict

A video from 2021 that shows a village sarpanch hitting and abusing a villager has been falsely linked to the recent election campaign in Telangana. It is not connected with the current ongoing election campaign in Telangana.