Old video of a railway cop asking for bribes from ‘migrants’ goes viral
Claim: A video has been going viral around social media platforms with false claims of a Railway Police Force (RPF) constable taking bribe from women in Gujarat. The video is being linked to the recent coronavirus lockdown where migrant workers are facing travelling issues. The minute-long video clip shows a uniformed policeman demanding money from a group of women on railway tracks who have a lot of things to carry and no masks on.
However, this is an old video from 2019 and actions were taken against this constable.
The post has been shared on social media platforms with captions that says “The men of India’s railway minister demanding money from helpless labourers for walking on the tracks. Be ashamed. Labourer = Helpless”
The caption was translated from Hindi: देश के रेलवे मंत्री के आदमी मजबूर -मजदुरो से रेलवे की पटरी पे चलने का भाड़ा लेते हुए…।।कुछ तो शर्म करो।।।। मजबूर==मजदूर
गुजरात मॉडल में रेल की पटरी पर पैदल चलने वाले मजदूरों से हफ्ता वसूल हो रही है
ये कैसा गुजरात मॉडल – ? – 🤔🤔🤔#गुजरात_रेलवे_पुलिस #गुजरात_मॉडल pic.twitter.com/Nc8u7ttfD9— Vipin Saraswat (@VIPs1973) May 10, 2020
The tweet has been archived here.
Hunger Games, Day-51, India; As no train, or other public transportation is running, people must walk 100s of km, sometimes >1,000 km. The police brutalize those who walk on the road, so they walk on train tracks. Here is a policeman collecting bribes from these wretched poor. pic.twitter.com/UkgGJtw7yp
— Jayant Bhandari (@JayantBhandari5) May 11, 2020
The tweet has been archived here.
The same video was also shared on Facebook. It had misleading caption in Bengali language too.
Facebook posts can be seen here.
The video was shared with Bengali caption as well which translates to ‘See the illegal way how railway cops are extracting money from migrant labourers’.
TRUTH
This video was shot in Gujarat from 2019. The RPF cop in the video was demanding bribe from a group of women who sold goods illegally. The constable was later dismissed.
After searching through keyframes from the video, an old tweet from July, 2019 was found with the same video. The video’s caption said, “RPF jawans in Surat dismissed from service after his video taking bribe from bootlegger women goes viral.” It has links it to a news report on their website, Desh Gujarat.
RPF jawans in Surat dismissed from service after his video taking bribe from bootlegger women goes viral https://t.co/C3uiWC3gu6 pic.twitter.com/t9kaBiixSb
— DeshGujarat (@DeshGujarat) July 13, 2019
More reports about the same were found published in July, 2019. Ahemdabad Mirror mentioned “An RPF constable named Jaikant has been dismissed from service after a video depicting him demanding bribes from women went viral. The video shot on WR’s Surat section.”
News video report from ABP Asmita also mentions about this incident. The video was uploaded on 11th July 2019.
Hence, the video currently surfacing online is an old video from 2019. It is in no way connected to the problems migrants are facing amidst the lockdown.
