Claim: A video shows a group of Pakistani Muslims brutally beating a Christian man in Pakistan.
Fact: The clip is not from Pakistan but is actually from India. The incident took place in August 2022 in Koral, an area of Bhopal, India when a group of students flogged a younger student over a dispute.
On 28 August 2024, anti-Islam activist Salwan Momika posted a video (archive) on X, claiming that it shows a Christian man being assaulted and flogged in Pakistan. “His only crime is that he is a Christian among Muslims in Pakistan,” the caption of the post added.
The 30-second footage features graphic visuals, showing a group of men beating up a young man who has a scarf shoved into his mouth to stop him from yelling. The victim then begs his attackers, who take the scarf from his mouth and release him after flogging him.
Momika previously shared false claims about a Muslim man abusing a young girl and a Muslim man stabbing a man in England, which were also debunked by Soch Fact Check.
Who is Salwan Momika?
Momika is known for carrying out a series (archive) of Quran burnings, causing anger and riots in multiple Muslim-majority countries over his actions. The Iraqi refugee sought asylum in Sweden where his temporary residence permit expired on 16 April 2024.
Before his temporary permit expired, however, he decided (archive) to apply for asylum in neighbouring Norway, where he was arrested on arrival and jailed (archive) at the police immigration detention centre in Trandum, as per an Oslo court order. Momika was deported (archive) by the authorities subsequently.
On 11 April, he was returned to Sweden, where he is currently under investigation “for incitement against ethnic groups”, according to The Associated Press. During his detention, viral social media posts claimed — and celebrated — that his dead body was found in Norway. That, however, turned out to be false after Soch Fact Check investigated the rumours.
Investigations into Momika’s past by France 24’s The Observers (archive) and Arab News (archive) have revealed his mysterious life, which is “full of contradictions”. According to the reports, he was a part of the Imam Ali Brigades, an Iraqi militia that was “accused of war crimes”, a Christian militia, as well as the ultra-nationalist Swedish Democrats.
Momika allegedly had ties with Daesh or the Popular Mobilization Forces (PMF), “a group of militias that have been integrated into the Iraq army since 2016 to fight against the Islamic State group organisation”. However, he has denied having links with the group, according to The Observers.
Swedish authorities also confirmed that he once “threatened to kill a man while holding a knife” and was consequently punished, the same publication added.
In the past, Momika has “praised” Muqtada Al-Sadr, an Iraqi cleric and politician who founded the Sadrist movement, but also announced his intention “to file a lawsuit” against him in another instance, according to Arab News. The publication also revealed that Momika founded the Syriac Democratic Union party and the Hawks Syriac Forces, which is “an armed militia established in 2014 that was affiliated with the pseudo-Christian militia Babylon Brigades”.
Fact or Fiction?
Soch Fact Check reverse-searched the keyframes of the video and the results on Google Lens led to a news article published on 5 November 2022, by the Indian news outlet The Free Press Journal. A screengrab from the viral video is featured in the article.
According to the story, the incident took place on 29 August 2022 in the Kolar area of Bhopal, India, but the video went viral in November. The article also quoted a police source and mentioned that the victim is a 16-year-old student who hailed from Bairagarh Chichli, Kolar Road in Bhopal.
Another Hindi language website Danik Bhaskar and Live Hindustan also reported the incident on 4 November 2022, citing that the students named his attackers as Richard, Lucky Malviya, Sandeep and Harshit. According to these reports, the persons involved all belong to the same religious community. However, the victim’s name was kept private due to him being a minor.
Soch Fact Check, therefore, concludes that the claim is false as the clip does not depict a Christian man being flogged by Muslims in Pakistan.
Virality
On X, Momika’s post received 579.6k views, 15,000 likes and 6,300 reposts within a few hours. The archived version of a similar post can be seen here.
Conclusion: A clip of a man being flogged by a group is not from Pakistan. The video is, in fact, from Bhopal, India and shows students assaulting a minor over a dispute.
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Background image in cover photo: @Salwan_Momika1
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