Social media was taken by a stir when a video of a young boy dancing to a Rajasthani folk song was mistaken for the Dalit boy who lost his life due to an alleged incident of assault. It is being said that the clip was taken a few days before he succumbed to his injuries.
The video was posted by a Twitter handle named Dalit Times with the caption, “An old video of Indra Meghwal, a 9-year-old boy from Jalore, Rajasthan, dancing in the classroom is going viral.”
Inder Meghwal, a 9-year-old schoolboy, passed away due to an incident of alleged assault inflicted on him by his school teacher, Chail Singh. The boy was caught drinking water from an earthen pot reserved for “upper caste teachers”. The assault is said to have taken place on July 20 at Saraswati Vidya Mandir in Jalore, Rajasthan. Chail Singh was later arrested for murder under the SC/ST act.
The clip went viral and was shared multiple times across Facebook. The video of the dancing boy got shared with captions such as, “Some memories of Indra. What innocence! How was this poor child even supposed to know that he would lose his life for merely quenching his thirst! It is hard to believe that this poor child got such brutal punishment. Thousand salutes to him!”
Through an AFWA probe it was revealed that the boy’s name is actually Harish and he resides in Barmer, Rajasthan. This was revealed through the comment section of the video.
Furthermore, the video was first posted by a handle under the name of Tr Chela Ram Raika on July 30. The original post had a caption in Hindi that said, “At the cultural program arranged on the occasion of No Bag Day on Saturday, Harish, a student of class two, confidently presented his dance recital.”
The user also later clarified that the video was being falsely used and linked to the Jalore incident and that originally, it was filmed at his school GUPS Gomrakh Dham.
