Fact Check: 2016 video of gun-toting men at SP rally passed off as recent incident in Meerut

India Today Anti-Fake News War Room found that a video featuring a group of young men brandishing guns at the reception of a Samajwadi Party leader is misleading. The viral video is more than five years old and is not related to the ongoing elections in Uttar Pradesh.

With two phases down and the third just days away in the Uttar Pradesh assembly polls, a video featuring a group of young men brandishing guns and firing them in the open has gone viral with the claim that this was shot recently at the reception of a Samajwadi Party leader.

Several Facebook and Twitter users shared the video with captions like: “Hundreds of illegal firearms were brandished during an SP procession. Guns were fired at the reception of Nawazish, the son of former SP cabinet minister and assembly polls candidate Shahid Manzoor. The video of them dancing with weapons at the procession has gone viral. The viral video is from the Kithore Assembly constituency. The gun-toting Samajwadi Party.”

Lawyer and Bharatiya Janata Party spokesperson Prashant Patel Umrao shared the viral video with the same claim.

India Today Anti-Fake News War Room ( AFWA) found the claim misleading. The viral video is more than five years old and is not related to the ongoing elections in Uttar Pradesh.

Soon after the video went viral, the Uttar Pradesh police refuted the claim by tweeting that it was from 2016.

But the police could not provide any visual evidence in support of their claim. When AFWA contacted Prabhakar Chaudhary, the SSP of Meerut, his office only reiterated that the viral video was from 2016, and that they were still investigating the matter.

AFWA tried every possible combination of keywords and searched the internet, narrowing the timeline down to 2016, but failed to find any videos related to the incident.