A video has been viewed hundreds of thousands of times in multiple posts on Facebook and Twitter in May 2020 alongside claims that it shows an intoxicated police officer in India after the government allowed liquor shops to reopen during the nationwide COVID-19 lockdown.
The one-minute 28-second video shows a uniformed police officer sleeping on the streets being awoken and taken away by fellow officers.\xa0The video also features\xa0the logo of\xa0News18 Hindi, an Indian television news channel., Below is a screenshot of the misleading post:, The post’s Hindi caption translates to English as: “The trends have started to come in after reopening of liquor shops.”, On May 1, 2020, India announced\xa0that liquor and other non-essential product sales will be allowed to resume in parts of the country\xa0during the extended lockdown., The announcement resulted in long queues and clashes with police as people rushed to liquor stores that were opened for the first time in almost forty days,\xa0AFP\xa0reported., The video has also been shared here and here on Facebook and here and here on Twitter, alongside similar claims., However, the claim is false., A keyword search found the video in fact shows an intoxicated police officer in\xa0Faizabad, a north Indian city, in June 2017. The footage was originally\xa0published here on the News18 Hindi website on June 27, 2017., The Hindi video description translates to English as: “A cop deployed in Faizabad was found in a drunken state. Police emergency vehicle came to take him to the police headquarters.”, Below are screenshot comparisons of keyframes from the video in the misleading post (L) and the News18 Hindi video (R):, The incident was also reported by other local media, including Patrika newspaper here and Kadak news outlet here., , , Copyright © AFP 2017-2020.  All rights reserved.  Users can access and consult this website and use the share features available for personal, private, and non-commercial purposes.  Any other use, in particular any reproduction, communication to the public or distribution of the content of this website, in whole or in part, for any other purpose and/or by any other means, without a specific licence agreement signed with AFP, is strictly prohibited.  The subject matter depicted or included via links within the Fact Checking content is provided to the extent necessary for correct understanding of the verification of the information concerned.  AFP has not obtained any rights from the authors or copyright owners of this third party content and shall incur no liability in this regard.  AFP and its logo are registered trademarks.
This video has circulated online since at least 2017 -- two years before the COVID-19 pandemic | AFP Fact Check