New Delhi:

An old video of Trinamool Congress (TMC) leader Sujata Mondal being chased with sticks by a group of people in a field is being shared with misleading claims that it was a recent incident in Arambagh, West Bengal, where people chased her away.

BOOM found that the viral video is from April 2021, when Mondal was kicked out of the polling station during the third phase of assembly elections in the state. Mondal later claimed that the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) was creating chaos and threatening TMC supporters in Ambach during the polls, but the BJP denied this.

In 2021, the TMC fielded Mondal as its candidate from the Ambaagh Assembly seat in Hooghly district, but she failed. In 2022, she divorced her then husband MP Saumitra Khan, who is now the BJP candidate from Bishnupur Lok Sabha constituency. Mondal legally separated from Saumitra and dropped “Khan” from his surname and contested the state panchayat elections as Sujata Mondal and won on TMC ticket to become the Bankura Zilla Parishad member in 2022. The TMC has awarded Mondal the Bishnupur Lok Sabha seat in the 2024 general elections, after her ex-husband Khan was fielded by the BJP again.

The 1.49-minute video was posted on X by user Rakesh Krishnan Simha (@ByRakeshSimha) with the title “TMC candidate Sujata Khan from Bishnupur in Bengal threatens Ambagh voters to vote for TMC or face consequences. Ambag voters beat up Khan and other party members and drove them away. Hindus in Bengal are fighting back.”

Click here view, and here for archiving.

Multiple X users are sharing the same video with the same misleading claims.

fact check

BOOM has discovered that the viral video of TMC leader Sujata Mondal being chased with a lathe by a group of people was posted in April 2021 and is not a recent video as claimed on social media posts.

Following the prompts in the post, we searched for the keyword “TMC leader Sujata khan attacked” and found multiple news reports about the incident in April 2021.

New Delhi TV reported on April 6, 2021 that during voting in the third phase of the state’s parliamentary election, Sujata Mondal, the TMC candidate from Ambach, was chased by a group of people with a lathe in the center of the venue. West Bengal Chief Minister Mamata Banerjee claimed that a BJP worker chased Mondal near a polling station and hit her on the head, a claim the party denied.

We can see the same visuals from the viral video in the report below.

Click here to view.

We also found that the same video with Anandabazar Patrika’s logo was posted on YouTube by the channel on April 6, 2021, titled “Sujata Mandal Khan attacked with bamboo sticks by goons”.

This story was originally Published by BOOMand was re-released by NDTV as part of Shakti Collective.