Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
A gruesome video showing a man with his hands and legs chopped off and dropping to the ground, is being shared on social media as the alleged brutal murder of an RSS worker in Kerala. The caption accompanying the video claims “The brutal murder of a Sangh worker in Kerala. Mother and wife were killed in front of the children. Still you will find people saying that nothing is happening in Kerala. Nothing is happening in Bengal. Nothing is happening in Nagaland. Nothing happened in Kashmir and nothing will happen in Delhi.”
The video in question is graphic in nature and we advise viewer discretion before looking at the gruesome video here.
Newschecker team also received requests on our WhatsApp Helpline (+91 9999499044) to fact-check this claim.
The claim has come to light after the recent murder of a Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh worker in Palakkad District on November 15, 2021. The police have arrested a Social Democratic Party (SDPI) of India activist in relation to this crime along with 5 other people. The SDPI activist is said to have hacked to death the RSS worker using a sword.
Another murder of the same nature happened in the coastal Alappuzha district in Kerala. The BJP OBC Morcha state secretary, Ranjith Sreenivas, was hacked to death on December 19, 2021. The police have arrested 10 people in relation to this murder, all the people arrested are activists of the Social Democratic Party of India (SDPI), which is a political offshoot of Islamist outfit Popular Front of India (PFI).
Fact Check/ Verification
Newschecker conducted a reverse image search of the key-frames of the video on and found an article by a website named ADN Sureste, dated 4th August, 2018 carrying the same image. According to the article the brutal murder of the individual happened in Oaxaca, a city located in Mexico.
Newschecker also found another article related to the same incident which reported that the murder was committed by drug cartels. According to the article, the man recording the video supposedly asks “Who killed Juanito Castellanos?”. As the victim falls to the ground, the man behind the camera reportedly says “Look, Geovanni, this is what is going to happen to you. One by one I’m going to tear them apart.”
On a keyword search of words “oaxaca”, “hands”, “cutoff”, “mexico”, “drugs”, Newschecker team was led to a video of the same incident in a website The video showed the same incident along with a text which relays the same information as the previous article.
Conclusion
The video being shared on social media with the claim that an RSS worker was hacked to death in Kerala is in fact an older video from Mexico and is being circulated as a recent incident.
Result: False
Our Sources:
ADN Sureste
CNM News
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Authors
Vaibhav is a part of Newschecker’s English team, where he spots and debunks all kinds of misinformation, making the rounds on the internet. A Journalism graduate from St. Xavier's College, Mumbai, he holds an M.A degree in Philosophy and an M.Phil from Delhi University.
