Fact check: Viral video does not show Muslims beating Christian in Pakistan; is from India’s Bhopal in 2022

Known Islamophobic provocateur Salwan Momika and other users on Wednesday shared a video on social media platform X, claiming that it showed a Christian man being brutally beaten by Muslims in Pakistan. However, the video is actually from an incident that took place in India’s Bhopal in 2022.
On August 28, Momika posted a video on social media platform X showing a man being brutally beaten by several others.
The caption for the post said, “His only crime is being a Christian among Muslims in Pakistan. Could Muslims in the West be treated the same way by Christians?”
The post gained four million views and was reshared 12,000 times.
The same video with the same caption was also widely shared by other users as can be seen here, here and here.
A fact-check was initiated to determine the veracity of the claim due to its virality and the concerning nature of the video showing alleged brutality against a minority member in Pakistan.
Examination of Momika’s post showed a reader’s note added to it that said: “This is an old video from Madhya Pradesh, India where a teenager was beaten up in a personal dispute in August 2022. The incident was not related to religious hate crime.”
An investigation to corroborate the note about the post using screenshots from the video yielded an article dated November 5, 2022, by Mumbai-based English newspaper The Free Press Journal titled: “Bhopal: Class 12 beaten brutally, police look for accused”.
The article used the same screenshot as a scene from the viral video of a man being beaten with a stick on his bare posterior.
As per the report, the video showed a 12th-grade student being beaten by his classmates who subsequently fled after the incident that occurred on August 29, 2022. The report said that a case was filed against the assailants.
The investigation also showed a previous report dated March 20, 2023, by Indian fact-checking outlet Alt News titled: “Old video of assault on Bhopal student viral with false communal claims”.
The report said the video was going viral at the time with the claim that it showed a Muslim being beaten by a Hindu girl’s brothers after he threatened to abduct her and throw acid on her in Uttar Pradesh.
Therefore, the fact-check determined that the claim regarding a viral video showing a Christian man being beaten up by Muslims in Pakistan is false.
The video is from an incident in India’s city of Bhopal in 2022 and had nothing to do with Muslims beating a Christian.
This fact check was originally published by iVerify Pakistan — a project of CEJ and UNDP.