Fact Check: Leer-biceps! This video DOESN'T show shirtless Muslim man harassing Hindu woman
India Today Fact Check found this was a staged video. It doesn't show a real incident.
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India Today Fact Check
This was not a real incident. It’s a staged video.
Picture this: a man and a woman walking on the street are suddenly accosted by another man who takes off his shirt and flexes his muscles. What makes this already strange encounter stranger is that the woman starts slapping the shirtless man, almost chasing him away. This is a video that’s been widely shared online and those sharing it claimed the shirtless man was Muslim and the woman was Hindu.
An X user wrote alongside the video that "Abdul" removed his shirt to show his body to a "Hindu woman and is well treated by the brave Hindu woman. Resist the unrighteous. This is the right path. Salute." The name Abdul is often used online as code for Muslims to avoid infringing community guidelines. The viral post’s archive can be seen here.
India Today Fact Check found this was a staged video. It doesn't show a real incident.
OUR PROBE
Responding to one of the viral posts, many claimed that this was a scripted video, taken from an Instagram account called “tamannakohli786787”. We checked the Instagram account and found the viral video shared there on September 19 with hashtags like "reels" and "entertainment".
The profile suggests that the woman in the video is Tamanna Kohli, a video creator with more than eight thousand Instagram followers. On the account, we found several similar videos that show different men flexing their muscles and then getting thrashed by Kohli.
Apart from this, the two men in the viral video can also be seen acting in other videos shared by the account.
To verify if the video was staged, India Today Fact Check spoke to Tamanna Kohli. She confirmed the video was completely scripted and that she created it for “public awareness”. There was no Hindu-Muslim angle to it, she added.
Thus, we ascertained that this video did not show a Muslim man harassing a Hindu woman on the street.
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