FAKE ALERT: Bihar video shared with false claim of Upper castes refusing food from Dalits

CLAIM

Twitter user Alex Ambedkar tweeted a video in which a man can be seen angrily kicking food kept at a table and yelling at the woman standing in front. This video is being shared with a claim that the 'meritorious people' at a covid-19 quarantine center refused to eat food cooked by a Dalit woman.

Word ‘meritorious’ is often used in left-political discourse derisively to take a swipe at upper caste Hindus.


At the time of writing this report, the video had already been retweeted more than six thousand times and viewed more than four lakh twenty five thousand times.

The same video is being shared on Facebook with the claim that two people named Shiraz Ahmed and Bhujoli Kurd refused to eat food cooked by Dalit women at a quarantine center.


TRUTH
Both claims made with the video are false.

The video is from Madhubani district of Bihar where a school in Madhwapur block has been turned into a quarantine center. The migrant laborers living there were unhappy with following the rules of social distancing while being served food and wanted them to be fed food in the usual way.

Failing this, they created a ruckus and an FIR has also been registered against them.

TRUTH AND VERIFICATIONThe name and place of the school is visible in the video. While observing it closely, we came to know that the video is from Madhwapur in Madhubani district of Bihar.

After that, using relevant keywords on Google, we found a May 18, 2020 report from Dainik Jagran titled, 'Migrants in Madhubani, Bihar kicked food, abused female cook'. The image used in the report matches the visuals from the above video

According to the report, 25 migrant laborers are being quarantined at the school-turned- Saharghat quarantine center. On Monday afternoon, the lady cook served them food on a plate and placed it on the bench. However, some of the migrant laborers asked her to sit and feed without keeping social distancing. After she refused, the migrants kicked the food and mistreated her.

The Google search also led us to another news report from a website called 'abpbihar.com'.

According to this report, an FIR has been filed in the case against three migrants. Their names are Pankaj Kumar Rai, Manoj Kumar Rai and Ashok Kumar Sahu.

Times Fact Check reached out to Saharghat SHO Surendra Paswan to know more about the matter. He said, “There is no Dalit angle in the case. Some people wanted them to not be served food via social distancing. They wanted the cook to sit and feed them. When the cook refused, there was a commotion and one of the migrants kicked the food. An FIR has been registered in the case.”

VERDICT
Times Fact Check has found that a video from Bihar where migrants protested against social distancing rules is being falsely shared with a caste angle.