In the backdrop of the beheading of a French teacher outside his school on October 16, 2020, a video of CCTV footage showing a brawl between three men is viral on social media claiming that it shows a Muslim man fighting back two French men.

In the video, one can see.. a man in a grey hooded sweatshirt in a heated argument with two other men in black sleeveless vests. Later, the man in the hoodie overpowers the other two men, leaving them flat on the floor.

A Facebook user Shaikh Arshad shared the video with a caption in Hindi that can be roughly translated to,  "#France news: Two French men attacked a Muslim in France, thinking he is alone and will be unable to fight back. But watch the video to know how the Muslim man fought back..."

At the time of writing this article, this post has been reshared over 500 times. 

The video is being widely shared on Facebook with the same caption. 

The truth behind the claim 

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false. The video is of an incident that took place on October 12, 2020, at a restaurant in Ouro Branco, in the central region of Minas Gerais state in Brazil.

With the help of a reverse image search using the keyframes of the video, we found a longer version of the same video carried by multiple news reports from Brazil. 

In the longer version of the video, we can also see the man in a grey sweatshirt leaving on a bike while the other two men are getting into a car.

We also found a report on the incident published on October 23, according to which the man in the grey sweatshirt is a motorcycle courier boy who was attacked on the night of October 12 by two men. One of the two men is identified as a regular offender named Rafael Junior da Costa Vieira, also known as Jackie Chan.

The report also mentions that following the incident, Rafael allegedly fired four shots at a car that was parked on the street and was eventually detained by police on the same night.

In another report published on October 27, the investigating officer in the case, Marcelo Fonseca Prado was quoted as saying that Rafael is "feared in the city". He was in an inebriated state on the night of the fight, according to the officer. The officer further said the CCTV footage shows Rafael and his friend warning the courier boy to stay away from Rafael's girlfriend. The police also said the courier boy, however, denied to know Rafael from before and said he is already married.

Moreover, as the footage is from October 12, the fight cannot be in the backdrop of the French teacher Paty's beheading that happened on October 16.

Therefore, an unrelated CCTV footage of a brawl from Brazil being falsely linked to the recent France beheading incident.