An old black and white video has surfaced on social media platforms showing the struggles of a right-wing ideologue Vinayak Damodar Savarkar when he was sentenced to Kalapani prison. The video is being shared claiming that it is BBC video footage of when Savarkar was in jail showing the atrocities against Savarkar when he was in jail.

The video is being shared with a caption in Hindi that can be roughly translated, "A British journalist went to Andaman's prison and made this rare footage of 'Veer Savarkar'. The BBC also showed it on its channel ... in which Veer Savarkar was imprisoned in a small cell. Veer Savarkar bore all these tortures for the freedom of the country .... not for himself, family, or to earn money. Vande Mataram."

The same video is viral on Facebook with the same caption in Hindi.

The 1.4-minute video is also doing rounds on Twitter for a long time. 

The truth behind the claim

In our investigation, we found this claim to be false. The viral video is a part of a long video made on the life of Veer Savarkar in 1983 and all of them were directed by Prem Vaidya.

With the help of a relevant keyword search on Google, we found a longer version of the video uploaded on the YouTube channel of 'Ministry of Information & Broadcasting' on August 14, 2014, with the title, "Life of Shri Vinayak Damodar Savarkar". The video has a watermark of 'Film Divison' on it. 

On checking the Film Divison website, we found three versions of the biographical movie were made on Veer Savarkar in 1983. 

Here is the description of the biography given in the catalog of the Film Divison website.

Hence, a short clip of a biography movie made on the life of Veer Savarkar is being falsely portrayed as real-life footage of Savarkar in jail recorded by a BBC journalist back in the day.