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| - Fact Check: Old video of Khushbu Sundar slapping a man resurfaces after she joins BJP
A video of Khushbu Sundar slapping a man is viral on social media with the claim that the incident happened after she moved to BJP.
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India Today Fact Check
The viral video is from 2019. No credible sources have reported that the man being slapped is a BJP worker.
Ahead of the 2021 Tamil Nadu Assembly elections, actor-turned-politician Khushbu Sundar dumped the Congress and joined the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) on October 12. Sundar, who joined the BJP hours after resigning from the primary membership of Congress, served as the national spokesperson for Congress since 2015.
Amid this, a video of her slapping a man is viral on social media with the claim that the incident happened after she moved to BJP. It is also being said that the man who was slapped is a BJP worker who misbehaved with Khushbu.
The caption to one such video in Tamil translates to, "Today, a BJP member who tried to misbehave with Khushbu was slapped by the actor."
India Today Anti Fake News War Room (AFWA) has found that the claim is misleading. The video is from 2019 Congress-JD(S) election rally in Bengaluru and no credible sources reported the man to be a BJP worker.
The archived versions of similar posts can be seen here, here, and here.
AFWA probe
With the help of the InVid tool and appropriate keywords, we found that the incident is from April 2019, and has nothing to do with Khushbu's recent entry into the BJP.
We found the same video carried by multiple media houses in April last year.
India Today carried the same video on April 12, 2019, in a report titled, "Congress Leader Khushbu Slaps Man for Misbehaving with Her during Roadshow".
According to the report, the incident took place when Khushbu was campaigning for the Bangalore Central Congress candidate on April 10, 2019. While Khushbu was on her way to the campaign jeep, a man misbehaved with her. Khushbu then slapped the man, according to the report.
The News Minute report on April 11, 2019 quoted Khushbu as saying, "He groped me once and I turned around and started walking. He groped me for the second time. That's when I turned and slapped him."
Quoting Bengaluru police, the article also reports that no FIR was registered against the man. He was warned and let go.
We also found 2019 reports on the incident by The Hindu, NDTV, News18, The Indian Express, Asianet News and The Quint.
However, no report has mentioned Khushbu or any other Congress leader alleging that the man who was caught misbehaving with the actor was a BJP worker.
Meanwhile, we also found a report by The Week which alleges the man to be a Congress worker.
The AFWA team could not independently verify the political affiliation of the man who misbehaved with Khushbu. Though it is clear that the incident is more than a year old and at the time of the incident, there was no allegation that the man is from BJP or any other political party.
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