Caste violence is a sensitive issue in India. Recently, a video has gone viral on social media claiming that a woman belonging from the Dalit community was beaten up by a priest for entering a Hindu temple. India TV's Fact Check team conducted an investigation to determine the truth behind the claims.
What is the claim?
A user by the name of Aman Singh (@amansxcodes) posted a video on X, formerly called Twitter, saying that a Dalit woman trying to enter a Hindu temple was "mercilessly" threashed by the head priest. "Poor Hindus get a different kind of Parshad (Grace) from Hindu Temples…Sad. Very Sad," he wrote in the caption.
The same video has been uploaded by another X user named iMayankofficial (@imayankindian), captioned, "This is my country. A woman tried to enter a Hindu temple. There are allegations that she was mercilessly thrashed by the head priest for being a Dalit woman. I don't know when and where the video is from. Getting viral on social media."
Is the video real?
In the process of INDIA TV fact check team's investigation, we reverse searched a frame of this video on Google. We were directed to an article by Dainik Bhaskar from two years ago, in which we found that the incident is from the Shyama Mai Temple in Darbhanga, Bihar.
As per the article, an altercation occurred between the priest and the woman after the latter claimed to be possessed by a goddess. Amidst the heated argument, the priest grabbed the woman by her hair, claimed he would fix her and started assaulting her. A video of the altercation was captured by an anonymous source. After the video went viral, the priest was fired from his job. However, we could not find any reports of an official complaint or the woman's identity.
Based on this information, we searched Google with the keywords 'Darbhanga priest beats woman' and found several news articles from August 7, 2021. As per the media reports, the temple was closed due to COVID-19 guidelines and so the woman's entry was not allowed, despite her insistence.
We could not find a credible source linking this incident with a caste angle. The incident did happen, but because of an argument between the priest and the woman in breach of COVID guidelines, not because the latter was a Dalit. Hence, we can establish that the claim is misleading.
