Amid many reports of post-poll violence across West Bengal, a video of a young man being beaten on a road has gone viral. Trinamool Congress MPs Kalyan Banerjee and Sagarika Ghosh shared the video claiming it showed a TMC worker being assaulted following the Bharatiya Janata Party’s victory in the state.
India Today Fact Check found that this video has nothing to do with post-poll violence in West Bengal. It was filmed in Mumbai’s Versova on April 9, and shows the assault of a man named Mohammad Zaid Sheikh.
OUR PROBE
A reverse image search of keyframes from the viral clip led us to the same video shared in an Instagram post dated April 15. This confirmed that the video predates even the first phase of the West Bengal Assembly elections (April 23) and therefore does not show post-poll violence in the state.
According to the caption of the post, the incident took place in the Versova area of Mumbai, Maharashtra, where unidentified assailants in an auto-rickshaw allegedly assaulted a young man named Mohammad Zaid Sheikh.
Further keyword searches led us to an April 11 report by Maharashtra News 9 that said that on the night of April 9, around 10 pm, stunt artist Zaid Sheikh was riding his motorcycle toward Thunga Hospital when a group of men allegedly intercepted him near Versova Social Hostel and attacked him, before fleeing the scene.
On April 10, Zaid’s wife, Ruhayma Zaid Sheikh, lodged an FIR at Mumbai’s Versova Police Station, accusing multiple individuals in connection with the alleged assault and attempted murder of her husband.
Per the FIR, Akash Troller and another unidentified person verbally abused Zaid and attacked him with an iron weapon, causing injuries to his face and eyes. She alleged that Akash was an associate of Huzaifa Gilani, who, following a motorcycle accident in 2025, had been repeatedly threatening Zaid.
Thus, it’s evident that a video from Maharashtra was falsely shared as footage of a TMC worker being assaulted in West Bengal.
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