A video has gone viral on social media platforms, showing two women slapping a man wearing a saffron scarf. Users claim that it shows a Muslim man masquerading as Hindu by wearing a saffron scarf, and that he was allegedly caught stalking college girls in an attempt to snatch their phones.
Right-wing handle @MeghUpdates posted the clip, which garnered more than 116,000 views, and has been shared around 2,000 times at the time of this article being written. (Archive)
A “Peaceful” in a saffron scarf was allegedly STALKING college girls and ATTEMPTING to snatch their phones before the Hindu girls CAUGHT him RED-HANDED and BEAT him up. 👏 https://t.co/EK2q3vkgN1
— Megh Updates 🚨™ (@MeghUpdates) September 25, 2026
In Right-wing social-media discourse, the term ‘peaceful’ is used as a a code word for Muslims as a negative stereotype, while avoiding saying ‘Muslim’ directly.
An X user with the handle @Hinduspirit0 had also posted the viral clip on September 24 with the same claim that a Muslim boy pretending to be Hindu while wearing a saffron scarf had been “caught red-handed and beaten up badly”.
Other users who shared this clip with the same claim included the user ‘Boiled Anda’ (@AmitLeliSlayer), Vishal Deep Singh (@VishalDeep5151), Amitabh Chaudhary (@MithilaWaaala), and (@singh31919). Archives: 1, 2, 3, 4
Click to view slideshow.The readers should note that many of this handles, like ‘Boiled Anda’, Amitabh Chaudhary, and MeghUpdates, have been found sharing misinformation and communal propaganda several times in the past.
Fact Check
To verify the veracity of the claims, we broke down the viral video into several keyframes. A reverse image search on one such keyframe led us to a news report by Aaj Tak, published on August 10.
According to the report, the viral clip is from Gwalior in Madhya Pradesh. On August 8, twin sisters Harshita and Rashita Agarwal, while on their way to college on a scooter, had one of their phones snatched by a miscreant trailing them on another scooter.
A chase ensued, after which the sisters were able to apprehend the man at an intersection and proceeded to thrash him, visuals of which began to circulate on social media soon after. The report identifies the culprit as a resident of Jalandhar, Punjab, named Manpreet. We found another news report published by The Free Press Journal, on August 9, which corroborated this finding.
On using relevant keywords, we also came across a video uploaded by ANI Bharat, in which Gwalior SSP Dharamveer Singh lauded the bravery of the twin sisters in nabbing the motorcycle-borne mobile snatcher.
So, to sum up, the viral claims suggesting that the man being slapped in the clip is Muslim, is false. The man in the viral video was identified as Manpreet.
This content originally appeared on Alt News and was authored by Prantik Ali.
Prantik Ali | Radio Free (2026-09-28T11:28:07+00:00) Gwalior mobile snatcher falsely portrayed as ‘Muslim man posing as Hindu’ in viral posts. Retrieved from https://www.radiofree.org/2026/09/28/gwalior-mobile-snatcher-falsely-portrayed-as-muslim-man-posing-as-hindu-in-viral-posts/
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