Fact Check by Factly: Hundreds of farmers have been camping at the Haryana-Punjab Shambhu border for over nine months (here, here, and here). In this context, a video showing a water tanker running over several women on the road is being widely shared across social media platforms, with claims that it depicts a recent incident in Haryana (here, here, and here). The claim further suggests that the Haryana government is responsible for this incident. The video is being shared on Facebook with the caption: “State brutality against female farmers. Remember the symbol (Om). Bulldozer Justice in UP vs Tractor Justice in Haryana.” Through this article let’s fact-check the claim made in the post.
The archived version of this post can be found here.
Claim: Video showing a tractor trampling women farmers during a protest in Haryana.
Fact: The viral video dates back to January 2021 and has no connection to Haryana. It shows an accident that occurred in Amritsar, Punjab, during a tractor rally held in support of the farmers’ protest. Hence the claim made in the post is FALSE.
To gather details about this viral video, we conducted a Google reverse image search using keyframes from the video. This search led us to a video (archived link) showing the same visuals, shared on X (formerly Twitter) on 28 January 2021. The caption of the video reads: “Two elderly women were killed, and three were injured when a tractor ran over them during the tractor parade.” This indicates that the viral video is not recent.
In the comments section of this post on X, the user also shared an ‘Amar Ujala’ news report dated 26 January 2021 about the incident. The tanker shown in this report also resembles the one in the viral video. According to this report, the accident took place during a tractor rally held in support of the farmers’ protest in Amritsar, Punjab, on 26 January 2021, when an uncontrolled tanker ran over women participating in the rally. As the tanker’s driver approached the protesting women, he lost control of the vehicle, which continued moving for several metres, trampling the women. In this incident, two women died, while five others were injured. During police interrogation, it was revealed that the accused did not know how to drive a tractor and did not possess a licence.
Upon further search, we found multiple news reports (here, here, and here) published in January 2021 about this incident, describing how an uncontrolled tanker ran over women participating in the rally in Vallah, Amritsar. From all this information, it is evident that the viral video is old, dating back to January 2021, and has no connection to Haryana.
Factly previously published a fact-check article debunking a similar video from the same incident that went viral, falsely linking it to the Ghazipur border area in Uttar Pradesh (here).
To sum up, an old video of an accident from Amritsar is currently being shared with a false narrative linking it to Haryana.
(Disclaimer: This story was originally published by Factly, and republished by India TV as part of the Shakti Collective.)
