A set of videos is being shared across social media showing school children fighting. The videos are circulated with the claim that a group of Muslims attacked ‘Hindu school-goers’ with knives in the Karawal Nagar area of North East Delhi.
The videos are being circulated as the month of Ramzan is underway. In the ninth month of the Islamic calendar, many Muslims fast from sunrise to sunset daily. Viral claims with a communal angle are being widely circulated during this time.
Claim:
A Twitter user @BambamThakur_HS shared a video showing a group of youths wearing school uniforms assaulting someone who rushes inside an autorickshaw. A few people rush towards the person being assaulted with rods in their hands.
The claim with the video reads, “Exactly two days before Ramzan, on March 20, from Khajuri to Karawal Nagar, people of particular community attacked Hindu children who were returning after giving their Class 12th examination with knives. By injuring more than 20 children badly, Ramzan gift to infidel Hindus.”
Twitter user Sunil Giri posted several videos of the incident with similar claims about an attack on Hindu children by assailants of a particular community.
Fact Check:
We conducted a keyword search with ‘Karawal Nagar clash’ and came across a report by NDTV published on March 22, 2023, titled, ‘6 Boys Arrested After Knife Fight Between Student Groups In Delhi’. The NDTV report noted that six boys were apprehended after a fight between two groups of students of separate schools in northeast Delhi's Dayalpur area, police said on Tuesday.
“Five students of a school in Karawal Nagar suffered injuries in the fight and were admitted to Guru Teg Bahadur Hospital, they said, adding the students are stated to be stable,” the NDTV report adds.
We then checked a report by Hindustan Times published on March 21, 2023, titled, ‘Delhi: 5 students injured in knife attack; six minors apprehended, say police’. The Hindustan Times report provided details of the reasons behind the incident. As per the Hindustan Times report, the incident involved a clash between the students of Government Boys Senior Secondary School, Karawal Nagar and another government school over a motorcycle stunt.
One of the assailants was reportedly performing a motorcycle stunt in front of the school in Karawal Nagar on March 17, 2023. Some students outside of the school demanded to know as to why he was performing stunts in front of their school, which led to an argument. These students allegedly slapped the boy performing the motorcycle stunt, due to which he fell off the motorcycle and got injured. Though the boy admitted himself to a hospital, he did not inform the police about the matter.
“The injured boys are all students of Class 12 of a boys’ senior secondary school in northeast Delhi’s Tukmirpur in Karawal Nagar. The assailants are current and former students of the boys senior secondary school in Nehru Vihar, about two kilometers away,” the deputy commissioner of police (northeast) Joy Tirkey is quoted as saying in the report.
In an attempt to take revenge, the student performing the motorcycle stunt gathered his friends to stage a counter-attack. On March 20, these boys attacked the school students of Karawal Nagar school as they were returning after taking their examination.
The Hindustan Times report notes that thee police also had to thwart attempts by a group of people to communalise the incident. The report quotes DCP Tirkey as saying, “All the 11 boys are of the same religion.”
We then also came across a report by Times of India published on March 22, 2023, titled, ‘Five boys hurt as two groups clash in Delhi’s Karawal Nagar’. The TOI report quotes DCP NorthEast Tirkey stating that there is no communal angle to the incident.
In our Fact Check, we also came across a video posted by Jhalko Delhi on March 21, 2023. In the video, a DCP (North East Delhi) on this matter. After giving all the details of the incident, the DCP stated, “On social media, it was reported that there was a fight between the school children of two communities. There’s no fight as such. All these boys belong to the same community. Further investigation is still being carried out.”
Conclusion:
We found that the viral videos do not show an altercation between two religious groups. The videos show a clash between two groups of students Class 12 of a boys’ senior secondary school in northeast Delhi’s Tukmirpur in Karawal Nagar. Thus, the viral videos have been circulated with false claims.
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