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| - Fact Check: Brutal video of man's hand getting chopped during machete fight is NOT from India
India Today found that this incident is from the Dominican Republic.
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India Today Fact Check
This incident is from the Dominican Republic. It has nothing to do with India.
(Content Warning: Video contains graphic violence)
A gruesome video making the rounds on social media purports to show two men fighting each other with machetes to secure their drug territory somewhere in India. The video shows one of the men losing his hand during the fight. It has been shared with captions like: “Nigerians in India”.
India Today Fact Check found that this incident is from the Dominican Republic. It has nothing to do with India.
Our Probe
We noticed many people reacting to this video pointed out that this happened in the Dominican Republic. A subsequent keyword search led us to a May 16 report in the New York Post that said this footage showed a “wild machete fight in the Dominican Republic”, adding that per local reports, the men were friends who were fighting over a woman.
Since Spanish is the most widely spoken language in the Dominican Republic, we searched about this incident in this language. We found that Ramon Tolentino, a journalist based in the Dominican Republic shared this video on X on May 15, 2024, stating that this incident happened in the municipality of Consuelo, which is located in the province of San Pedro de Macors.
According to Diario Libre, Dominican Republic’s leading daily tabloid newspaper, this incident happened on May 14 and the person whose hand was chopped off was 31-year-old Kelvin Melquiades Trinidad. The other man was identified as Nelvin Felix.
According to the Spanish news website Diario De Morelos, the clash was triggered by an alleged love triangle, and the two men seen fighting in the viral video were former friends.
Surprisingly, in a May 15 report published in La Tribuna, there is a video, in which Kelvin can be seen smiling and dancing, with a bandage wrapped over his stump wrist.
Thus, it’s more than clear that this video has nothing to do with India.
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