Clip of Attack on Odisha Theatre Artists Shared With Misleading Communal Claim

A short clip went viral in which man on stage said that he would convert Hindus to Muslims on social media platforms. In the clip, the man can be seen getting attacked on the stage.

Those sharing wrote, "A peaceful was giving speech against Hindus A single Hindu man went on stage and gave him in front of peaceful fringe mob." (sic.)

An archive of the post can be found here. 

This post recorded 361.8K views at the time of writing this story. (Archives of similar claims can be found here and here.)

Is this true?: No, this claim is misleading.

• This visual is from a stage play called Swami Pain Narkaku Jibi which was performed in the Sambhalpur district of Odisha. The actor was identified as one Naba Kishore Ghosh, who was playing the role of a Muslim character.

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What we found: At first, we noticed a comment under the viral post by another X user who wrote, "Don't mislead people. This was a scene from a Jatra (drama) somewhere in Odisha. But the audience being overly sensitive or immature thought it was real and started attacking the actor. There is no involvement of any mob or anything else in this." (sic.)

An archive of the post can be found here. 

• With the help of this, we undertook a relevant keyword search and found an article by OdishaTV from 11 September. It noted that the incident occurred in the Naxapali region of Sambalpur district where the Swarna Mahala Opera staged the play 'Swami Pain Narkaku Jibi' in the locality.

• It noted that while watching a jatra (a form of folk theatre in Odisha) an emotional audience became engrossed were unable to control their anger towards artists who convincingly depicted villain characters mistreating the hero.

• We also found a video report by with the help of which we matched the keyframes of the video. It also noted that an emotionally-charged audience threw bottles at the theatre actors.

Here is the comparison between the two.

• However, none of these reports mentioned that the religious identity of the actor.

• According to a report by , it interviewed one of the artists who was attacked. The artist idenitfied as one Naba Kishore Ghosh who was portraying a Muslim character.

• We also came across another interview of the artist on a YouTube page named . We reached out to the page and the admin told us that the actor was portraying a Muslim character and said that he will convert Hindus to Muslims. Then, he was attacked by a member of the audience.

Conclusion: The video has been shared with a misleading communal spin.

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