Fact-Check: Bilaspur 'Attack' Debunked as Scuffle Over Headlights, Not Religion

By: Shikha Yadav

A claim was made on X from the account @SanatanPrabhat that a Hindu man was attacked by an Islamist mob in the Bilaspur district of Chhattisgarh turned out to be a scuffle of two individuals about dipping the headlight of the car as per the fact-check carried out based on the police records. The post on X shows a video and a few pictures of the victim and links to their website article about the same incident presenting the same claim.

 

Screenshots of articles in Organiser and Sanatan Prabhat

The article linked to the X post claims that the victim of the attack was wearing a tulsi garland and the assailants, attacked him after mistaking his name for a particular religious identity. According to the report, the victim went to the police station and filed a complaint. However, no other relevant information like the date of filing the First Information Report (FIR) was mentioned in the article.

Further inspection of the X post pointed to a watermark (@subhi_karma) in the video attached. A page has been found on X with this ID of Subhi Vishwakarma, who published a ground report in Organiser, the RSS mouthpiece about the incident. The link to the article was shared by the X user in the same thread.

The Organiser report also puts forward similar claims with some additional ones that a friend of the victim was present in the vehicle who belonged to the same religion as the assailants intervened only after the victim sustained serious injuries. 

However, the Organiser report also shares the details of the First Information Report (FIR number: 419/2024) filed by the victim at the Civil Lines police station in Bilaspur on May 7. Though an image of the FIR was given along with the report, details were not readable in the image. 

Utilising the online FIR search database of Chattisgarh Police, the original FIR of the incident was retrieved. Upon inspection, it was found that the communal angle of the incident as mentioned in the reports of the Organiser and the Sanatan Prabhat and the social media handles was not true.

After going through the FIR, it was found that the reason for the attack was an argument related to dipping the headlights of the car following which the attackers thrashed the victim, not due to Tulsi garland as stated in the articles. There is no mention in the FIR regarding arguments over the religious identities of the people involved. The FIR also shows that the friend of the victim wasn't seated back and reacted late instead he intervened and witnessed the whole incident and helped in identifying the attackers.

Hence, the viral claim is false and tries to incite highly dangerous communal angles with the use of exaggerated and manipulated facts.