Recently, a video is being widely shared on social media platforms showing a young woman being brutally thrashed by a police officer claiming that a young Muslim woman assaulted by a French Policeman. 

A user named Mohd Danish shared the video with a caption, "French policeman beats brutally a lonely Hijab clad Muslim girl. Please make it viral lest it is removed from the media."

Many other Twitter users are also sharing the video with the same claim.

In the video, one could see a policeman slamming a handcuffed woman to the floor and forcefully taking off her headscarf.

When we checked on Facebook we found that this video is being widely shared with the same caption. 

The video is being shared in the backdrop of French teacher Samuel Paty’s beheading by a Muslim fundamentalist on October 16. 

The truth behind the claim 

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false.  This incident dates back to 2017 and took place in Calgary city in Canada, not in France. The video shows an incident when a Calgary cop slammed a handcuffed black woman to the floor while she resisted him taking off her headscarf.

With the help of reverse image search on TinEye, we found a report by Daily Mail UK with the title, "Moment Calgary cop JUDO THROWS handcuffed black woman face-first to the floor and shatters her nose in what fellow officer calls the 'worst use of force he has seen in 30 years."

According to the report,  Calgary police officer 34-year-old Alex Dunn threw 26-year-old Dalia Kafi on the ground with her hands still cuffed behind her back, according to CBC. It added that Dunn, who is in a trial for assault, testified that he thought Kafi had slipped out of her handcuffs and didn’t mean to pull her to the floor. The report also stated, “In December 2017, Dunn arrested Dalia Kafi for breaching her court-imposed curfew and obstruction of justice after she gave him a fake name when the car she’d been traveling in was pulled over by police.”

CBC and Global News also reported the incident. 

However, the reports say that the officer assaulted a Black woman, Kafi’s religion has not been specified.

In conclusion, an old video from 2017 from Canada is being shared on the Indian social media platforms with the false claim that a Muslim woman was assaulted by a French police officer.