Pro-Khalistan supporters harassing Gujaratis in the UK is falsely linked with the ongoing Canada issue
Claim
Open threats to Gujaratis on the streets of Canada by #KhalistaniTerrorists #KhalistanReferendum#TrudeauTyranny Hillary Clinton “If you raise snakes in your backyard.”
Rating
Explanation
In the 31-second viral video we can see a man wearing an orange turban holding a yellow flag written as Khalistan in it. We also hear that man threatening the old man saying in Punjabi, “Gujaratis, listen properly. We’ll give you two-two slaps. If you want to have langar, keep quiet and have langar. Your community has done a lot of drama after drinking urine. I’m telling all Gujaratis, if you start fighting, we’ll go into Gujarat, your home, and fight you. Go drink urine. Go do what you want.” This same post is shared across the social media with similar claims by different users which can be seen here, here, and here. Come let’s check the veracity of this claim.
Open threats to #Indian Gujaratis on the streets of #Canada!
SHAME SHAME @JustinTrudeau SHAME!@HCI_Ottawa #IndiaCanadaTension #IndiaCanada pic.twitter.com/QrU9yx0vaP
— Varun 🇮🇳(@varunc_bjp) September 24, 2023
What’s the truth?
When we started our research using the keyframes of the viral video we found that the incident is from early March of this year and not a recent one. The YouTube channel namely “Oneindia News” has uploaded the the lengthy version of 58-seconds of the same viral video with the title ‘Watch: Khalistani supporters threaten a Gujarati man in Southall’ on 23 March 2023.
On further research we also got an article published by ‘The Free Press Journal’ titled as “Khalistan supporter threatens to slap a Gujarati passerby in London’s Southall; video goes viral” on 23 March 2023. According to the article, “Since the Punjab Government began their crackdown on Khalistani leader Amritpal Singh and his supporters, protests erupted in the United Kingdom. Videos of the Khalistan supporters are surfacing on the internet and in one such viral video, some protestors could be seen heckling a passerby.
The video which was shared by a news portal titled Desh Gujarat showed a supporter harassing the passerby. Sharing the video, they captioned it, “In a viral video today, a radical Khalistan extremist can be seen threatening a Gujarati passerby in foreign country.”
In the video, ‘The Khalistan supporters could be heard raising pro-Khalistan slogans when one of the demonstrators blocks a passerby who happens to be a Gujarati. The demonstrator donning black kurta, orange turban and holding Khalistan flag then lashes out at the passerby and swears at him in Punjabi and threatens that they will wage a war in his home state. The heckler also threatens him saying he will slap the him. He continues his angry rant even as others try to deflect the situation.’
Meanwhile we also got a tweet posted by the BJP National Secretry Manjinder Singh Sirsa, who condemned the incident saying, “These are not Sikhs. Sikhism teaches us to live in harmony with one and all. I condemn such bullying. Nothing justifies it.”
All the above evidence clearly proves that the video is old and is not from Canada and it also has no connection to the recent India-Canada issue.
Conclusion:
Thus, we conclude through our investigation that the viral video showing the pro-khalistan supporters harassing the gujaratis on the street of UK is falsely shared as Canada. Moreover, the viral clip is old and from 23 March 2023.
